20 Activist Hedge Funds Managing $40 Billion+ Will Gather in Phoenix to Compare Notes

Many of the world’s most aggressive hedge funds, along with their strategic advisers, are convening in Phoenix, AZ later this month to discuss investment ideas and exchange best practices in shareholder activism.

Phil Goldstein (See Phil's recent profile in Fortune Magazine) and I are co-chairing The Second Annual Hedge Fund Activism & Shareholder Value Summit September 22-23 at the Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona.

Panel discussions will be led by some of the best known activists who together manage more than $40 billion in assets and have instigated high profile fights at several companies this year, including: Dillard’s Department Stores, CSX Corp, Brinks Co, CNet Networks, Ikon Office Solutions, Yahoo!, Motorola, and Phoenix Companies, to name a few…

Some of the notable speakers include fund managers from Barington Capital, Bulldog Investors, Dalton Investments, Ironfire Capital, Jana Partners, Lawndale Capital, Locksmith Capital, Newcastle Management, Oliver Press, RLR Capital, Sandell Asset Management, Shamrock Activist Value Fund, Steel Partners, The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI) and Western Investments.

Top advisers to the activists (and a few advisers to companies) include (my firm) Hedge Fund Solutions, Joele Frank, and Sard Verbinnen (Strategy Consultants and Public Relations Specialists); DF King, Georgeson, Innisfree, MacKenzie Partners, and The Altman Group (Proxy Solicitors); Olshan Grundman, Schulte Roth, Lowenstein Sandler, Kirkland & Ellis, Skadden Arps and Wachtell Lipton (Legal Counsel); RiskMetrics/ISS, Glass Lewis, and Proxy Governance (Proxy Advisors); and more.

Finally, representatives from major institutional investors like CalSTERS, T. Rowe Price, Angeles Investment Advisors, Delaware Public Employees Retirement System and Denver Employees Retirement Plan - who combined control hundreds of billions in pension fund assets, will talk about how they manage activist investments.

This is guaranteed to be an epic affair with plenty of thought provoking discussions around what successful activist investors are doing and how they are doing it -- including a no-press-allowed case study of CSX led by the dissident investor TCI and their legal counsel Marc Weingarten from Schulte Roth.

For additional information visit the event’s website.

Posted By Damien Park, CEO Hedge Fund Solutions. dpark@hedgerelations.com