Elliott's Singer says Argentina damaging itself, on 'sad path'
Reuters-Jul 15, 2015NEW YORK Paul Singer, head of roughly $25 billion hedge fund Elliott ... "Argentina was the seventh largest economy in the world coming out of World ... Singer also said at the New York conference that Greece, whose Prime ...
http://nypost.com/2015/07/12/south-korean-media-slurs-antisemitism-toward-paul-singer/
South Korean media slurs antisemitism toward Paul Singer
Some mergers are hostile, but this tie-up between two divisions within the South Korean Samsung conglomerate has personal vitriol behind it.
On July 17, a vote is planned on the merger of Samsung C&T, a construction company, and Cheil Industries. Both are subsidiaries of the Samsung Group, the country’s largest family-controlled conglomerate, headed by the Lee family.
Enter Elliott Associates, which owns 7 percent of C&T, stating that the merger is a sweetheart deal for the Lee family and not beneficial to either company’s shareholders.
Soon after questioning the deal, Elliott CEO Paul Singer, found himself a victim of hate speech in the South Korean media.
“Jews are even represented in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ written in 1596, in the form of a loan shark named Shylock. Elliott’s past deeds naturally overlap with Shylock. Elliott’s nickname in the US is ‘vulture,’ a greedy bird that feeds off dead bodies. Elliott withstands any ethical criticism if it can win profit, ” said one of a number of recent articles about the Samsung proposed merger on Mediapen.com, a South Korean news Web site.
The media also dragged in Institutional Shareholder Services. a proxy advisory firm, which agreed with Elliott and said shareholders should vote no on the deal.
One of the more vocal critics is Mediapen columnist Kim Ji-ho, who wrote, “The rationale for the assumption that ISS will be supportive of Elliott’s claims is that ISS, like Elliott, is founded upon Jewish money.
“Jews are known to wield enormous power on Wall Street and in global financial circles. It is a well-known fact that the US government is swayed by Jewish capital,” Kim concluded.
Elliott and ISS declined to comment on the comments.
http://nypost.com/2015/07/16/its-a-shame-samsung-spat-became-attack-on-jews-paul-singer/
It’s a shame Samsung spat became attack on Jews: Paul Singer
Warship-seizing hedge fund mogul Paul Singer said he wakes up most mornings preparing to do battle.
“Maybe you wake up saying, ‘This is going to be a great day,’” the 70-year-old Singer said in a rare public appearance on Wednesday. “I wake up most days saying, ‘What is it going to be today?’”
Singer is known as much for his pessimistic wit as his take-no-prisoners battles around the globe.
His latest skirmish is with Korean conglomerate Samsung, where his Elliott Management hedge fund has a 7 percent stake and has drawn local scorn for his opposition to the company’s plan to merge two of its construction subsidiaries.
Local media accounts attacked him for being Jewish and likened him to Shylock from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.”
“It’s a shame that this element of anti-semitism has crept into a business dispute,” Singer said at the CNBC Institutional Investor conference.
“I don’t think the Korean people are anti-semitic,” he said, adding that he’s a big fan of the country and even rooted for Korea in a World Cup match during a 2002 visit.
He also acknowledged that trouble seems to follow him but said “these things don’t arise out of my desire to fight with people.”
He also defended his battle with Argentina — which has refused to pay him the $3 billion it owes him — explaining that he only tried to take control of an Argentine naval frigate in Ghana out of frustration.
The bold effort to take the ship drew global attention to his battle only to backfire on Singer when an international maritime court eventually forced Ghana to release the ship.
“What we missed, I must say, was this was considered to be the flagship of the Argentine navy so they weren’t happy,” he said.
Singer, who had never spoken publicly about his decade-long debt dispute with the South American country, said his firm wants to negotiate with Argentina and is “amenable” to taking a discount on the bonds he owns “if only a negotiation would start.”
Cristina Kirchner, Argentina’s president, has refused to sit down at the bargaining table and calls Singer and other holdout creditors “vultures.” But many investors are betting sentiment will shift when a new government is elected in December.
Not Singer. “I have a hope not an expectation”, he said.
Singer also opined on the recent crash in China’s “wild” markets, saying its collapse will rival the subprime bust that ushered in the 2008 global financial crisis. “The stories that will come out of this will be absolutely fantastic,” he predicted.
“All phenomenon in China tend to be big,” said Singer.
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