Following the closure of its initial public offering (IPO), RailAmerica has started trading under the ticker symbol “RA" on New York Stock Exchange since Tuesday.   RailAmerica, which filed for IPO in late July, had offered 10.5 million primary shares and 11.5 million secondary shares priced at $15 per share last week. It had expected them to price for between $16 and $18. The company intends to use the proceeds of $144 million from issuing 10.5 million primary shares for paying off debt and other corporate purposes.   The shares, which started trading on Tuesday, fell by approximately 8.2%. A number of private equity companies that unloaded their portfolio companies recently have realized gains less than expected.   Rail America is a portfolio company that was bought by Fortress Investment Group in February 2007 for $640 million. Fortress still retains 55.8% of the stock after the IPO. It has ...

Just a quick heads up, Fortress Investment Group (NYSE:FIG) is upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight while raising their target price to $9 (!) from $3. - Firm notes the revised price target is based on 18x their 2010 EPS of $0.48, whereas their prior price target was based on 11x firm's previous 2009 EPS estimate of $0.27. Notablecalls: Note this call is part of a larger Alternative Asset managers call but FIG kind of stands out with the upside. I think FIG can go to $5 (or higher) following this call.

With Wal-Mart reporting its earnings yesterday, an eventful earnings season almost closed its books. Although the performance of companies during the quarter was not as bad as feared, it was not encouraging either. The 455 S&P firms that have reported their earnings so far posted a 35% y/y profit declines.  For the full year, analysts expect a 13% earnings fall among S&P firms to $56.57. Nevertheless, investors once again showed appetite for risk and went bargain hunting.  The S&P registered a 1.5% advance, and the NASDAQ added 1.0%. The DJIA edged 0.6% higher.

Financials were once again the leading gainers, with a 3.5% advance. JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) shares jumped 4.4%, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) added 2.7%, and Citigroup (NYSE:C) was up 4.1%. Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), fresh from its $8.6 billion stock sale, jumped 6.2% after Moody's (NYSE:MCO) raised its ratings on the company's preferred shares, saying there is an

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bReason for comment/bbrbr York Pharma announced today that it has returned flammazine/flammacerium to Solvay. pThe transaction was originally structured as a series of two payments, the first of which for €17 million was completed in July and the remainder of €11.5 million, to be completed by the end of the year. The first tranche of this transaction was funded by an asset-based loan provided by Fortress Credit Corporation, an offshoot of the large New York-based hedge fund Fortress Investment Group with the second being funded by other investors. pGiven the extremely difficult capital market circumstances of the last 6 months, York Pharma was unable to raise the second part of this transaction in cash and had instead, negotiated with Solvay a 'vendor note' to enable the transaction to complete and York to take full posession of the drug portfolio. However, Fortress decided in light of this to ...

h1 style="text-align: center;"bGate Clauses amp; Lock Ups/b/h1h2 style="text-align: center;"bspan class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"Gate Clauses amp; Lock Up Periods for Investors/span/b/h2br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wM_OZdOMR_Y/ST6Vek9SU8I/AAAAAAAACmo/pisAcon781Y/s1600-h/hedge-fund-gating-clause-lock-up-periods.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 160px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wM_OZdOMR_Y/ST6Vek9SU8I/AAAAAAAACmo/pisAcon781Y/s200/hedge-fund-gating-clause-lock-up-periods.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277820165874144194" border="0" //aHedge Fund Research's Global Hedge Fund Index was down 3.04 percent in November, after a drop of 9.26 percent in October (see FIN Alternatives a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.finalternatives.com/node/6269"article/a). That brings the index down 22.3% YTD through November. Continued poor performance has increased redemption requests, causing an increasing number of hedge funds to block investors from redeeming shares (see NY Times a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/05views.html?_r=1amp;ref=business"article/a). The increased addition of illiquid investments over the years (such as real estate and private equity) has caused many funds to start considering a new model that would require longer lock-up times for lower fees. High-water marks, which would force some under-performing ...

If you look at the companies that major contributors to the presidential candidates are connected with, stock indexes can be created for each candidate. Forbes Magazine came out with a great list of the members of the Forbes 400 that have contributed to presidential campaigns. The following spells out the stocks of each candidate, and who the contributor is. The contributors are either major shareholders or they run or have run these companies. The above graph shows the Barack Obama Stock Index and the John McCain Stock Index and compares them to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. What is interesting is that the returns for the two presidential candidates are almost identical, with the McCain Stock Index down 21% and the Obama Stock Index down 22%. But what is most unusual is that the indices for both candidates greatly underperformed the ...