SAC Capital Partners

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SAC Capital Partners (SAC Capital Advisors, SAC Capital Management) is a $14 billion dollar group of multi-strategy, multi-discipline hedge funds founded by Steven A. Cohen in 1992. The Company is incorporated in Anguilla, British West Indies^[1], and its trading offices are located in Stamford, Connecticut and New York City. SAC also maintains dedicated satellite offices in San Francisco and London.^[2]

The firm has 800 employees and manages $14 billion in assets.^[3] SAC's latest $3 billion Multi-Strategy Fund, which has a 3 year lock-in, is specifically geared towards longer-term intrinsic investments. While most hedge funds charge a performance fee of 20% to 30% of the annual returns, SAC keeps 50%, the highest in the industry.^{[citation needed]} Favored industries for the fund include high technology, retail/consumer goods, and healthcare.

SAC founder Steven Cohen's estimated net worth is $6.8 billion.^[3]

1 Investments
2 Biovail lawsuit
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Investments

According to BusinessWeek magazine, SAC Capital Partners routinely accounts for as much as 3% of the New York Stock Exchange's average daily trading, plus up to 1% of the NASDAQ's – a total of at least 20 million shares a day.^[2] In addition, SAC reportedly has a considerable stake in New River Pharmaceuticals [2], California solar power firms [3] [4], Cypress Semiconductor Corporation [5], AC Moore, Greenbrier Companies [6], Marinemax Inc. [7], Bally Total Fitness [8], New Frontier Media [9], Progen Industries [10], retailer Casual Male^[4], pharmaceutical company Impax Laboratories [11], Phelps Dodge [12], supermarket chain Pathmark Stores [13], and Penwest Pharmaceuticals [14]. The hedge fund also controls 19.5% of search engine Baidu [15]. One of its new investments in 2006 was a stake in Tyco International [16]. Its newest investments are Avanex. [17] SAC is now dabbling in private equity. ^[5]

[edit] Biovail lawsuit

In March 2006,60 Minutes reported on a lawsuit against SAC and Camelback (now known as Gradient Analytics) by Biovail, a Canadian pharmaceutical company. According to the report, in the spring of 2003, SAC asked Camelback, an Arizona stock-analysis firm, for a report on Biovail. Former Camelback employees alleged that SAC had determined the content and timing of their reports on Biovail in order to drive the price of the stock down. In the following six months Biovail’s stock fell 50 percent, however, the Company issued two disappointing earnings statements. Biovail CEO Eugene Melnyk insists it was the Camelback reports that triggered the sell off.

Camelback responded by saying it had already written a negative report on Biovail that pre-dated the alleged conspiracy and said "everything in our reports was true; we and no one else wrote those reports; "nothing we did was illegal." The report also noted that ten years previously Melnyk had sued another hedge fund, accusing it of spreading rumors about his stock in order to sell it short. Camelback said the former employees were lying and disgruntled and had been fired for poor performance and unethical conduct. SAC denied all the charges and said that the stock was overvalued and that the decline was due to earnings shortfalls and regulatory investigations.^[6]

In March, 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Biovail and some of its former officers, for accounting fraud, particularly that "Biovail actively misled investors and analysts about the reasons for the company's poor performance". Biovail settled for $10 million US. ^[7]