market folly

Eric Mindich's hedge fund firm Eton Park Capital Management has started a brand new position in Vallar (LON: VAA). The London Stock Exchange has revealed that due to trading activity on the 22nd of December, 2010, Eton Park now controls 5.03% of Vallar's voting rights.

In terms of other recent Eton Park activity, we saw that the hedge fund supported Air Products' (APD) latest bid for Airgas (ARG) in one of their arbitrage trades. However, nothing has materialized there. Eton Park's most recent acquisition is a bit of a head-scratcher and you'll see why below in the company description:

Per Google Finance, Vallar is "a holding company formed to acquire a single company, business or asset that has operations in the global metals, mining and resources sector. The Company focuses on the Americas, Russia, Eastern Europe and Australia. It focuses on commodities, including base metals, coking coal, iron ore, thermal coal, gold, silver and uranium."

For other activity out of Eton Park, we also detailed an increase in their Lonrho (LONR) stake.