Singer’s Elliott Management Cuts Alcoa Stake as Soros Exits
Singer’s Elliott Management Cuts Alcoa Stake as Soros Exits
(Bloomberg) -- Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. pared its stake in Alcoa Corp. by almost two-thirds last quarter and billionaire George Soros’s hedge fund exited.
By the end of December, Elliott Management owned 2.9 million shares in Alcoa, compared with 8.3 million the previous three months, a regulatory filing showed. Elliott Management was the third-largest Alcoa shareholder as of the third quarter. Soros Fund Management LLC sold all its remaining 123,787 stake in the aluminum producer in the fourth quarter, a separate filing showed.
Aluminum prices rallied last year, helping Pittsburgh-based Alcoa shares climb 92 percent as China’s drive to curb pollution spurred cuts at smelters in the Asian nation. The sales from Elliott and Soros may have been timely: the euphoria that sent the stock to a nine-year high in mid-January is waning as investors pull back after the company said higher input costs offset surging aluminum prices last quarter, eroding earnings growth.
Filings released this month do not include hedge funds’ current position, which may have changed since the end of the quarter. Alcoa’s shares have fallen 9.9 since the end of December. Money managers who oversee more than $100 million in the U.S. must file a Form 13F within 45 days of each quarter’s end to list those stocks as well as options and convertible bonds.
In other filings, billionaire investor Stan Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office LLC cut its holdings in iron-ore producer Vale SA by a third. Duquesne sold 812,200 Vale American Depositary Receipts, leaving its stake at 1.67 million. The firm bought 709,200 shares of U.S. Steel Corp. worth $25 million.
--With assistance from Laura Millan Lombrana
To contact the reporters on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in New York at ljavier@bloomberg.net, Joe Deaux in New York at jdeaux@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Attwood at jattwood3@bloomberg.net, Joe Richter, Debarati Roy
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