James Dinan’s public disclosure of his firm, York Capital’s short position in J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE:JCP)’s debt has been well publicized but it has not done the trick for the fund’s February returns. York Capital’s hedge funds showed mixed performance, the flagship York Multi Strategy with assets in the range of $5.3 billion was flat in February according to a shareholder letter obtained by ValueWalk. Due to the sizeable return in January, the hedge fund is up 1.9 percent in 2013.
York Credit Opportunities with $4.4 billion in assets under management was up 0.6 percent in last month and returned +3.3 percent for the two months of the year. The $1.9 billion European Opportunities Fund was down 0.5 percent in Feb and up 1.7 percent for the year. The highest performance was experienced in York Asian Opportunities Fund which gained 2.3 percent in last month and a brilliant 7.3 percent YTD through February. The Asian Opportunities strategy manages $500 million in total.
York Capital’s funds mostly operate on an Event Driven, Risk and Merger Arbitrage strategy. According to EurekaHedge Event Driven index was up 0.66 percent while Arbitrage was up 0.54 percent in last month. Among the hedge funds followed by EurekaHedge, 200 of them are up more than 10 percent in the first two months. The European and Asian indices of Eurekahedge have outperformed their local markets in Feb. Meanwhile the HFRI Event Driven index gained 2.3 percent in the year by the end of last month.
Total AUM of York Capital’s above listed funds has now exceeded $12 billion. In January AUM was $11.88 billion. York Capial mostly invests in debt and equity of companies that are expected to undergo a structural change. James Dinan criticized Bill Ackman’s resilience in supporting a lost cause, J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE:JCP) was trading 2 percent down last month. However the shares are up 4.8 percent as of this writing.
