KKR Ends Anti-Coal Campaign

Chesapeake was merely a pawn in the master plan of His Holiness Mister Henry Kravis who, in an admittedly Carlyle-esque move, ordered the ads to make sure the hippies were on his side for the TXU deal, now that the law has quietly favored him he doesn’t need the campaign anymore.

clipped from online.wsj.com The founder of a group that ran a series of newspaper ads attacking the coal industry for selling a product that they called "filthy" says the campaign is ending. Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D., W.Va.), chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, called the ads an "absolute insult" to coal miners. He said the Clean Sky Coalition, which ran the ads, was set up by the chairman of Chesapeake Energy Corp. Mr. McClendon said there were other members of the coalition, but wouldn't identify any. ads ran in Texas newspapers in February during a fight against a Texas utility, TXU Corp., which was planning new coal-burning plants.

Where U At?

Too hungover tired for real news I went to CNN, and found this amusing little piece.

My Faves:
Her pup is named Amortization, and she’s a handicapped shark.

20% ROE Underwear – Baller.

The one that got away. Clearly there are advantage to sleeping around networking. Lets you run a cash flow negative company, then take $80 million profit and escape unharmed.

Calls his own portfolio companies "weeds". Clearly smokes some too.

Suicidal Billionaire

Boris, you're getting a little too comfortable in Britain, saying things like that. Didn't you get the point when Scotland Yard dropped all the Litvenenko investigations that if England won't outright help Russia it at the very least won't get in the way. You better make sure UK has a damn good reason to keep you around, but I don't think there's much you can do. Better start planning the funeral.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Boris Berezovsky said he's helping to plan a revolution in Russia to overthrow President Vladimir Putin. `I am calling for revolution and revolution is always violent,'' Berezovsky said Berezovsky, 61, said he was in contact with members of the Russian political elite who oppose Putin and is helping finance efforts to oust him. The billionaire said today he wanted to restore democracy to Russia by removing what he described as a ``terrorist regime.'' U.K. authorities made a ``mistake'' in granting him asylum, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said `It is very hard for us to believe that London is granting asylum to a man who openly, being on British soil, speaking to British journalists, demands the use of force and violence in our country in order to change the existing political system,'' Peskov said. Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika ordered a new criminal case be opened against Berezovsky

Bernanke: Pro-Hedgies

I don't hate the ol' Bernanker anymore. This may be the first clear, concise and smart thing he's said since he took over Alan's job. Thanks - finally policymakers are realizing that it's ultimately the [qualified] investors' job to decide if the prospective returns are worth the risk.

clipped from online.wsj.com Bernanke Says Don't Regulate Hedge Funds Too Heavil "Because hedge funds deal with highly sophisticated counterparties and investors, and because they have no claims on the federal safety net, the light regulatory touch seems largely justified," Mr. Bernanke said in prepared remarks of a speech at New York University. He called the "rapid growth" of hedge funds "one of the most important developments in U.S. financial markets in the past decade or so In the case of hedge funds, as long as investors are sophisticated and understand the potential for losses, then "market discipline is a powerful and proven tool for constraining excessive risk-taking," he added. In response to the LTCM episode, the Congress might have imposed a much more intrusive regulatory regime doing so would have been costly and technically difficult, would have increased moral hazard...and likely would have reduced the social benefits of hedge funds by hampering the ability of their managers to respond quickly

Damn it feels good to be a Hedgehog!

That's right the average pay package for a Top 100 PM was nearly 4.5x the salary of the top investment banker at $241 million dollars. Big ups to John Arnold for brining home the bacon (ok, more like the whole damn farm) with $1.5billion total comp.

clipped from dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com John Arnold of Centaurus Energy in Houston, who took home an estimated $1.5 billion to $2 billion last year because his fund’s bets on the direction of natural-gas prices paid off, according to Trader Monthly’s latest ranking of top-paid hedge fund managers. Mr. Arnold, a newcomer to the list, appears to have been on the winning end of the ill-fated trades that triggered billions of dollars in losses at Amaranth Advisors over just a few days last fall, eventually forcing that hedge-fund firm to shut down. The energy trades helped Mr. Arnold deliver a whopping 317 percent return before fees Mr. Arnold, a 33-year-old former trader at Enron, charged his investors a 3 percent management fee and a 30 percent incentive fee. the average pay among the 100 best-paid fund managers was $241 million. For a point of comparison, Goldman Sachs’s chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, the highest-paid boss on Wall Street, got a pay package valued at $54.3 million last year.

Hedge Fund Gossip!

Some comments on NY Mag's pictorial of the "Hedge Fund Wives"

#1 Perry's wife, doesn’t look 49 at all, very well done surgery. Too bad she’s a flower power tree hugging hippy and thus dirty on the inside.
#2 Griffin’s wife is smart, which is good because this way she has at least something going for her.
#3 Loeb’s wife has a ginormous head (and that’s the only well endowed body part it seems). Space for rent?
#4. Ganek’s wife: For a former style editor she sure seems to be 6 years too late with that quite unflattering (as in makes her look preggo fat) outfit.
#5: Icahn’s wife is a cougar, and with a name like Gail Golden… Makes me wonder what her "services" for women traveling without their husbands are all about.
#6: Robbins’ wife: Looks like she did a lot of taste testing of that “nutrient rich” peanut butter developed for Ethiopians. I commend her for sacrificing her body to charity. Apparently she spent all her money on it too, since that outfit looks like it was purchased at the Salvation Army.

clipped from nymag.com 1. Lisa Perry 49, wife of Richard Perry recently started her own line of retro-inspired clothes a huge Democratic donor who’s taken up Hillary-for-prez as her personal cause 2. Anne Dias Griffin 36, wife of Kenneth Griffin graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Business, and cut her teeth at Goldman Sachs in London before founding the $55 million Chicago-based Aragon Global Management 3. Margaret Munzer Loeb 34, wife of Daniel Loeb a former yoga instructor and graduate of Brown and NYU’s School of Social Work, married then-man-about-town Loeb in July 2004 4. Danielle Ganek 43, wife of David Ganek former Woman’s Day style editor In May, Viking publishes Danielle’s art-world send-up, Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him. 5. Gail Golden 57, wife of Carl Icahn founder of Gutsy Women Travel, which arranges luxury group trips for women traveling without their husbands 6. Amy Robbins 37, wife of Larry Robbins shelling out $1.3 million for a special, nutrient-rich peanut butter for Ethiopian kids

Good Call [Option] for "Gazik"

So it would look like Kremlin increasing Western presence and further legitimizing its destruction of Yukos, but if you read the terms carefully and sum it all up Gazprom is actually getting paid to hold a very lucrative call option, that can ultimately increase both its global and local reach. I never said Putin was a dummy!

clipped from online.wsj.com The joint $5.8 billion purchase by Italian oil giant Eni SpA and utility Enel SpA of assets once belonging to Russia's bankrupt OAO Yukos shows how hungry Western energy companies are for greater access to the country's vast oil and gas resources. The two Italian firms on Wednesday became the first foreigners to directly acquire assets through the controversial auction of Yukos However, as part of the deal, Russia's gas monopoly OAO Gazprom has an option to purchase 51% of most of these same assets within the next two years Should Gazprom exercise the call option, according to the statement, the assets will be operated through a joint venture between Eni and Gazprom. Gazprom also has an option to buy the companies' 20% stake in Gazprom Neft, Russia's fifth-largest oil company, in the next three years. Eni and Enel's participation in the deal also helps Moscow legitimize an auction process that was widely criticized as being part of the government's aggressive policy

Kenny G's Ambition

I can't fault him for the way he's thinking. Making enough new money to become old money in your own lifetime is quite a feat, but if he really wants to establish a lasting institution I hope he keeps his public issuances to the debt realm. A public hedge fund in an era of ever-increasing SEC scrutiny is a recipe for disaster, even if it is a quant shop.

clipped from money.cnn.com Kenneth C. Griffin fits the hedge fund stereotype quite nicely. He's young (38), fantastically rich (worth $2 billion or so), and he collects museum-quality art (he recently spent $80 million to take a Jasper Johns off David Geffen's hands). He's got the trophy home, obviously, and is married to a very attractive woman, the former Anne Dias. What sets him apart from his fellow nouveau zillionaires is the scale of his ambition. Griffin seems to be going for full-blown, captain-of-industry immortality, the kind achieved by titans who didn't just dot, but shaped, the landscape of business Ken wants to be a J.P. Morgan or John D. Rockefeller. That's hard to do if you're an adherent of the reclusive, cloak-and-dagger Way of the Hedgie. Citadel Investment Group, has around $13 billion in assets and is one of the largest and most powerful funds in the world. Citadel accounts for more than 3 percent of average daily trading volume on the New York, Tokyo and London exchanges,