Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - September 2008 - (Page 31)

Cover Story Christopher Hohn Chris Hohn Rethinking BITTER PROXY BATTLES AND POOR RECENT PERFORMANCE ARE COMBINING TO MAKE EUROPE’S MOST FEARED ACTIVIST CONTEMPLATE SCALING BACK HIS ACTIVISM. By Loch Adamson C hristopher Hohn is beside himself. It’s a dreary rain-swept morning in early September, and Hohn, looking more like a graduate student, with his rimless glasses and rumpled shirt, than the most feared shareholder activist in Europe, strides briskly across a conference room in his hedge fund’s stark, glasspartitioned, modern headquarters in Mayfair, London, and drops down into a black leather chair. The intensely private, 41-year-old founder of the Children’s Investment Fund Management (UK) has just made a rare public announcement and still wears the pained expression of the reluctantly exposed: TCI is joining with New York–based Atticus Capital to once again challenge the management of German stock exchange operator Deutsche Börse Group. “The company’s valuation has collapsed this year, and shareholders are suffering,” declares Hohn. ”We’re frustrated with Deutsche Börse.” These are frustrating times, indeed, for Hohn, the golden boy of activist investing, who rose to fame by halting Deutsche Börse’s 2005 bid for the London Stock Exchange and who last year single-handedly sparked the sale of ABN Amro Bank — the biggest banking transaction in history. In ﬁve years his assets under management have soared 30-fold, to more than $15 billion. But 2008 has been another story entirely. Hohn is struggling seemingly everywhere — with markets, investment targets, uneasy investors and, increasingly, with himself. His high-proﬁ le effort to challenge corporate culture in Japan by trying to take a commanding stake in one of its largest energy wholesalers has been thwarted by the Japanese government. And in late May he had to endure a public grilling for more than an hour in open court in New York City in his yearlong battle with CSX Corp., the U.S. railroad group that operates an extensive network of freight SEPTEMBER 2008 • INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR’S ALPHA • 31

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - September 2008

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - September 2008 Contents Letter from the Editor Longs & Shorts Pension Corner: Culling the Herd The Good Guys: Ending the Cycle Interview: Press Credentials Cover Story: Rethinking Chris Hohn Strategies: At the Edge of the Earth Profile: Alpha Femals Strategies: Tails, You Lose Research Center: The Top Equity Trading Firms Alpha Bytes: The Light Is On Unhedged: Commentary: Not-So-Dire Diagnosis

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.