A couple of big name hedge fund managers are long Irish pharmaceutical company Perrigo, which has been resisting a takeover bid from Mylan since April.

Texan hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Management had 836,593 shares of Perrigo at the end of the second quarter, according to the fund's 13-F filing.

Business Insider reported back in May that Bass had snapped up a large long position in Perrigo, a manufacturer of store-brand OTC products,generic prescriptions, and store-brand baby formula.

Bass also purchased a stake in Mylan in the second quarter. The fund last held 780,251 shares, the filing shows.

Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson has purchased more than 2 million shares of Perrigo.

Paulson also owns 21.9 million shares of Mylan.

The fund voted on Friday in support of a Mylan-Perrigo merger.

"The combination of Mylan's unparalleled generic capabilities with Perrigo's attractive OTC platform would create a global pharmaceutical powerhouse. The combined company will benefit from the growth in generics and OTC plus the migration of generics to OTC for many years to come. Mylan management has a successful track record of integrating acquisitions. The transaction is expected to be accretive based on cost synergies alone and likely meaningfully accretive when revenue synergies are taken into account," Paulson said in a statement.

Mylan has proposed a $36 billion cash-and-stock bid, or $232 per share, an offer Perrigo has called "value destructive." The deal hangs in the balance, with The Wall Street Journal's Liz Hoffman reporting on Friday that Institutional Shareholder Services has recommended Mylan shareholders vote against authorizing the takeover.

Hedge funds that bet on mergers and acquisitions have enjoyed some success investing in healthcare companies so far this year. Philippe Ferreira, senior cross-asset strategist at Lyxor Asset Management, recently told The Wall Street Journal's Stefanie Eschenbacher that the sector had contributed about 60% of event-driven hedge funds' gains this year.

Shares of Perrigo were trading up more than 1% on Friday, or around $2.10, at around $194.60 per share.

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Hedge funds had to publish their 13F filings on Friday, and that means we have insight into what the biggest names in finance were buying and selling in the second quarter.

There are a few standout investments: Tech-focused hedge fund Tiger Global took a big position in Netflix, while Jana Partners invested in Precision Castparts right before Warren Buffett announced a takeover of the company.

A number of funds also took positions in pharmaceuticals stock Perrigo, including Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital.

Alibaba was another stock to see hedge fund action in the second quarter. David Tepper's Appaloosa Management bought into the Chinese e-retailer, while Tudor Investment Corporation — led by billionaire Paul Tudor Jones II — sold out.

Here is a breakdown of what the biggest names in finance were buying and selling in the second quarter, based on Bloomberg data on the top buys and sells by market value.

Leon Cooperman at Omega Advisors

The $9 billion hedge fund opened positions in Priceline, Google, Springleaf Holdings, Gulfport Energy, and MGM Resorts in the second quarter, according to his fund's 13F filing. The hedge fund sold out of Humana, Caesars Entertainment, IBM, SandRidge Energy, and Time Warner Cable. 

Carl Icahn at Icahn Associates

Activist investor Icahn Associates opened positions in Gannett Co. and Cheniere Energy, and it sold its stake in Netflix, according to the fund's 13F. 

Dan Loeb at Third Point

Third Point opened positions in Baxter International, T-Mobile US, Sealed Air, Devon Energy and Perrigo, according to the fund's 13F. It sold out of Dollar General, McKesson, Edgewell Personal Care, Maxim Integrated Products, and FleetCor Technologies. 

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Legendary hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, who runs Duquesne Capital, made a huge bet on gold during the second quarter.

Duquesne, which is now run as a family office, finished the second quarter with 2.88 million shares of SPDR Gold Trust, according to the fund's 13F filing.

The new position is now Druckenmiller's largest long position.

Druckenmiller's GLD stake had a value of $300.3 million at the end of the quarter based on the June 30 closing share price of $104.27. Shares of GLD have fallen 5.5% since then.

Druckenmiller has previously said that when he sees something that really excites him he will "bet the ranch on it." We reached out to Druckenmiller for comment on his GLD position.

Druckenmiller also increased his position in Facebook to 1,872,700 shares, up from 252,000 shares in the first quarter. He also took big new positions in Freeport-McMoRan (3.547 million shares), Halliburton (1.547 million shares), and Wells Fargo (1,679,400 shares), the filing shows.

Hedge funds are required in 13F forms to disclose only long equity holdings. These regulatory filings don't come out until 45 days after the end of each quarter.

Here's how GLD shares performed during the second quarter:

And here's how GLD has performed since the start of the second quarter:

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Claren Road Asset Management, the long-short credit hedge fund backed by private equity giant Carlyle Group, was turning money away a year ago.

Now its assets under management are plummeting. 

Bloomberg News' Simone Foxman and Saijel Kishan report that investors asked to pull $1.97 billion from the fund in the last round redemption round.

That is equivalent to around 48% of the fund's remaining $4.1 billion in assets.

The fund will manage approximately $2.1 billion in assets from October 1. 

The fund's assets under management hit a peak of $8.5 billion in September 2014, according to the Bloomberg report, but since then have been hit with a series of redemptions after suffering heavy losses on bets on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last October. 

Claren Road was founded in 2005 by four former traders from Citigroup's credit trading unit—Brian Riano, John Eckerson, Sean Fahey and Albert Marino. Carlyle acquired a 55 percent stake in the fund in 2010.  Last year was the fund's first down year. 

Carlyle's co-CEO Bill Conway said during the second quarter earnings call that Claren Road had turned down $1 billion a year ago "because they just didn't feel that they had the market conditions or the right opportunities to put that money to work."

The fund had had a "tough time" since then, he said.  

"But they do have a long track record of strong risk adjusted returns, very proven team that's [done] the job, same people that were there when we initially acquired 55% of the business. We're working closely with them to sustain and restore the confidence that their investors have had with them for more than a decade."

This isn't the first Carlyle Group-backed fund to take a hit recently. Vermillion, a commodity hedge fund backed by Carlyle, has seen its flagship fund's assets fall from nearly $2 billion to less $50 million, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. 

A spokesperson for Claren Road declined to comment. 

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It seems the hottest hedge fund trade right now is betting on a huge pharmaceutical merger that is up in the air.

Numerous hedge funds led by some of the biggest names in the industry have recently snapped up large new positions in the healthcare companies Mylan and Perrigo, according to regulatory filings.

Hedge funds giants including David Tepper's Appaloosa Management, Kyle Bass' Hayman Capital, James Dinan's York Capital, Daniel Och's Oz Management, and Eric Mindich's Eton Park Capital bought into one or both companies in the second quarter, according to regulatory-filing data compiled by Bloomberg.

John Paulson's Paulson & Co. has also taken a big position, according to separate filings.

The Irish pharmaceutical company Perrigo has been resisting a $36 billion cash-and-stock takeover bid from the Netherlands-based Mylan since late April. Under the terms of the offer, Perrigo shareholders would get $75 cash and 2.3 Mylan shares for each share of Perrigo stock.

The deal hangs in the balance. Perrigo has called the proposed deal "value destructive," and on Friday morning the influential proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) issued a report recommending that Mylan shareholders vote against the proposed Perrigo takeover.

Mylan's largest hedge fund shareholder, Paulson & Co., came out later that day and said it voted with all its 21.9 million shares, or 4.46% stake, in favor of Mylan's takeover bid of Perrigo.

"The combination of Mylan's unparalleled generic capabilities with Perrigo's attractive OTC platform would create a global pharmaceutical powerhouse," Paulson said in a statement. "The combined company will benefit from the growth in generics and OTC plus the migration of generics to OTC for many years to come."

Mylan has also recently received the support from its largest shareholder, Abbott Laboratories, a 14.5% stakeholder, in its pursuit of Perrigo. Abbott sold its generics business in developed markets outside the US to Mylan in a $5.3 billion all-stock deal last summer.

The proxy advisers Glass Lewis and Egan-Jones have also recommended that Mylan shareholders vote in favor of the proposed acquisition.

Hedge funds have gone from being underweight to overweight healthcare in the past year, according to the research firm Novus.

Healthcare "in general is becoming a more prominent sector for hedge funds — it was the third-largest exposure in May, now the second behind discretionary," Novus' co-chief research officer Stan Altshuller said.

Mylan and Perrigo were among the top new positions in healthcare during the second quarter, according to Novus. Novus said 103 of the 1,000 hedge fund portfolios it tracks owned Mylan. That's one out of every 10 funds.

There have also been numerous long/short equity fund managers who are "tourists" to the healthcare sector and have jumped in on huge M&A deals.

Philippe Ferreira, senior cross-asset strategist at Lyxor Asset Management, recently told The Wall Street Journal's Stefanie Eschenbacher that the healthcare sector had contributed about 60% of event-driven hedge funds' gains this year.

Below is a roundup of hedge funds that have stakes in Mylan and Perrigo. (Note: The * indicates that the fund has a stake in both stocks. Hedge funds have to disclose only their long equity holdings every quarter in a 13F form. These filings don't come out until 45 days after the end of each quarter. It's possible that they could have traded in and out of those positions since that time.)

Hedge fund shareholders of Mylan:

*Paulson & Co. (21,913,061 shares)

*Pentwater Capital Management (4,329,791 shares)

*York Capital Management (2,561,480 shares)

Fir Tree Incorporated (2,061,741 shares)

Taconic Capital Advisors (1,955,000 shares)

Farallon Capital (1,846,000 shares)

Glenview Capital (1,815,874 shares)

Columbus Circle Investors (1,494,449 shares) (sold 5,361 shares in Q2)

*Eton Park Capital Management (1,456,404 shares)

Arrowgrass Capital Partners (1,345,879 shares)

Point72 Asset Management (1,331,200 shares)

*Senator Investment Group (1,270,000 shares)

*Oz Management LP (1,238,816 shares)

Columbus Hill Capital Management (1,054,500 shares)

North Tide Capital (1,000,000 shares)

Appaloosa Management (989,528 shares)

Ratan Capital Management (905,000 shares)

Deerfield Management (871,000 shares)

Marshall Wace (792,864 shares) (sold 54,654 shares in Q2)

*Hayman Capital Management (780,251 shares)

MD Sass Investors Service (700,835 shares) (sold 332,820 shares in Q2)

Hedge fund shareholders of Perrigo:

*York Capital Management (3,717,125 shares)

*Oz Management (3,481,169 shares)

*Eton Park Capital Management (2,986,851 shares)

*Paulson & Co. (2,097,500 shares)

Visium Asset Management (2,091,441 shares)

*Pentwater Capital Management (1,950,000 shares)

Highfields Capital Management (1,934,104 shares) (sold 360,000 shares in Q2)

*Senator Investment Group (1,150,000 shares)

*Hayman Capital Management (836,593 shares)

DE Shaw & Company (703,443 shares)

Renaissance Technologies Corp (634,367 shares)

Jet Capital Investors (619,000 shares)

Third Point (600,000 shares)

Millennium Management (468,323 shares)

Smithwood Advisers (460,000 shares)

Chesapeake Partners Management (454,365 shares)

Discovery Capital (449,320 shares)

Davide Leone & Partners (409,463 shares)

Lone Pine Capital (375,924 shares)

Two Sigma Investments (365,308 shares)

Corvex Management (360,310 shares)

Frontier Capital Management (349,502 shares) (sold 57,586 shares in Q2)

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Hedge funds are loving Allergan, Apple, Facebook, TimeWarner Cable, and AT&T.

That is according to some research from Goldman Sachs, which put together a "Very Important Long Position List."

The investment bank said in the report: "Hedge fund favorite long positions tilt toward growth and momentum, the two best-performing factors in 2015." 

These stocks are the ones that appear the most frequently in the top 10 holdings of hedge fund portfolios with 10 to 200 positions. Goldman analyzed 833 fundamentally-driven hedge funds' portfolios based on their 13-F filings for the second quarter and positions in the beginning of the third quarter.

We've included the top 25 picks ranked from the least held to the most widely held. 

Walgreens Boots Alliance

Ticker: WBA

Sub-sector: Drug Retail

Equity Cap: $100B

No. of funds w/ 10 to 200 positions owning stock: 40

No. of funds with stock as top 10 holding: 21

Avg. portfolio weight when stock ranks among top 10 holdings: 6%

% of equity cap owned by hedge funds: 10%

Total return YTD: 22%

Air Products and Chemicals

Ticker: APD

Sub-sector: Industrial Gases

Equity Cap: $32B

No. of funds w/ 10 to 200 positions owning stock: 36

No. of funds with stock as top 10 holding: 23

Avg. portfolio weight when stock ranks among top 10 holdings: 6%

% of equity cap owned by hedge funds: 30%

Total return YTD: 3%

Priceline

Ticker: PCLN

Sub-sector: Internet Retail

Equity Cap: $67B

No. of funds w/ 10 to 200 positions owning stock: 37

No. of funds with stock as top 10 holding: 23

Avg. portfolio weight when stock ranks among top 10 holdings: 7%

% of equity cap owned by hedge funds: 11%

Total return YTD: 13%

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A small hedge fund has made big money on the chaos in China.

Emerging Sovereign Group's Nexus fund made a 75% return in two days last week, thanks to a big bearish bet on China, according to The Wall Street Journal's Juliet Chung.

The Nexus fund made about $100 million on put options it had bought on the yuan prior to the People's Bank of China's unexpected devaluation of the currency.

Put options allow investors to profit when the value of the underlying asset (in this particular case, the yuan) falls.

The Nexus fund erased its earlier losses and is now up about 50% year to date. The fund had been down 11% through the end of July, the report said.

Emerging Sovereign Group was founded in 2002 by Morgan Stanley alums Kevin Kenny, Mete Tuncel, and Jason Kirschner with seed money from legendary fund manager Julian Robertson, the founder of Tiger Management. The Nexus fund is managed by Brian McCarthy, who joined ESG in 2011 from RBS, where he worked in foreign-exchange sales. The firm now manages $4.5 billion in total.

Carlyle acquired a 55% stake in ESG back in 2011.

Carlyle, which is primarily known for buying companies, has been making investments in hedge funds in an effort to diversify its strategy.

The performance is a bit of good news for Carlyle, which has seen a few of the hedge funds it backs take hits in recent weeks.

Last week, Claren Road, which managed $8.5 billion a year ago, got hit with another wave of investor redemptions, bringing its AUM to approximately $2.1 billion. Then, in July, Vermillion, a commodity hedge fund backed by Carlyle, saw its flagship fund's assets fall from nearly $2 billion to less than $50 million.

Carlyle declined to comment.

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Famed short-seller Jim Chanos is betting against SolarCity, the solar power company cofounded by Elon Musk.

The founder of Kynikos Associates revealed on CNBC's "Halftime Report" that he thinks SolarCity's business model is similar to that of a subprime financing company.

SolarCity installs solar panels on residential and commercial buildings. The company was founded by Peter and Lyndon Rive, and Elon Musk, their cousin, is chairman.

Musk helped conceive of the idea for the company, and is its biggest shareholder. 

Here's what Chanos had to say about the company:

"And the residential model, I'd like to point out — SolarCity is really a subprime financing company in effect. You basically lease the panels from SolarCity. They put them on your house and they collect the lease payments. So in effect, if you put on the panels you have a second mortgage on your home because you hope it's an asset, but in many cases it turns into a liability."

The stock was trading down more than 9% Friday.

We reached out to SolarCity for comment.

Here's a chart of this week's trading:

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Lyndon Rive, the chief executive of renewables company SolarCity and cousin of billionaire serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, has never heard of hedge fund manager Jim Chanos until Friday.

That's when Chanos — the short seller famous for his research on Enron and Tyco — revealed SolarCity is one of his new big short positions.

Chanos went on to compare the solar company to subprime housing.

"You basically lease the panels from SolarCity and they collect the lease payments. So in effect, if you put on the panels, you have a second mortgage on your home because you hope it's an asset, but in many cases, it turns into a liability," Chanos said.

Shares of SolarCity hit a 52-week low of $40.75 following Chanos' comments. The stock closed down $5.99, or -12.75%, to end the day at $40.99. Solar, as a sector, got clobbered Friday, and so did the rest of the stock market.

"First I've ever heard of the guy," Rive said in telephone call with Business Insider shortly after 3 p.m. Eastern Time Friday.

He added that Chanos is "intentionally misleading people [by] saying it's subprime."

Rive called Chanos' analogy "dramatically wrong," noting that the average FICO score for their customers is 740 and the lowest score is 650. Anything below 640 is considered subprime.

"[Chanos is] wrong. He knows this. Our FICO score is public when we do securitizations ... He's intentionally saying this to add more pressure to the stock so he can make money."

He later added that Chanos "just doesn't understand the business."

Rive went on to explain that SolarCity has a "very straightforward" business model and that its products help customers save money.

He said, "You are the homeowner. Today you use energy. You pay for that energy from a utility. We provide homeowners an additional source of energy so they have another choice."

SolarCity has four different offerings for its panels. There is an option to purchase the system upfront in full, which can cost $15,000 to $20,000. Then there's a lease where SolarCity owns the panel system, but the customer pays for the power that it provides every month. 

There is no investment required for customers who lease. The company installs the panels and customers sign a 20-year contract so SolarCity can finance the systems. Customers also pay a fixed price for 20 years. That price guarantee proves "full transparency," according to Rive.

He said SolarCity helps customers save 15% to 20% on their monthly utility bills. 

It charges $0.15 per kilowatt hour in California, which is cheaper than the $0.20 per kilowatt hour a utility would charge. Rive added that SolarCity is also cheaper than its competitors, who charge "maybe 16 or 17 cents per kilowatt hour." 

One of Chanos' arguments is that solar prices have come down and those people who have signed these 20-year contracts are paying an "above market" price.

Chanos said on CNBC: "The reason being is that the prices that they have contracted retail customers out for are now relatively uneconomic in the newer world of solar, where prices are dropping. And I would just like to say ... I think solar is a transformational industry and it's going to be a great thing. Part of it is costs keep coming down — that's a problem if you're SolarCity and your customers are paying you these above-market prices and you hope to sell more and more systems."

It's certainly possible that a newer customer to SolarCity could get a lower rate than those who signed a contract three or four years ago. But the company argues that customers are still going to have a lower rate than the traditional utility no matter what.

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Billionaire activist investor Bill Ackman, founder of the $19 billion hedge fund Pershing Square, says it is "very likely" that he will pursue another deal similar to the one that led to the controversial sale of Allergan in 2014.

"What we did in Allergan was we called the question and allowed shareholders to decide what they wanted to do with the future of their business," Ackman said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday. "And I think that there are acquirers who would like to — companies they would like to buy. There are transactions that don't happen for 'social issues' that I think we can help catalyze.

"So I think it's very likely we will partner with another strategic to make a bid for a business. We may not get it, but you know, if the outcome for shareholders is the business either improves on its own or gets sold to someone else, I think that's a win."

In April 2014, Ackman took a stake in the pharmaceutical company Allergan and teamed up with the Canadian pharmaceutical company Valeant to try to force Allergan to accept a takeover from Valeant.

All of Ackman and Valeant's offers for the Botox-maker were rejected. By November 2014, the Irish pharmaceutical company Actavis said it was buying Allergan in a deal valued at $66 billion.

Even though Valeant was unsuccessful in its takeover attempt, Ackman, who had started buying Allergan's stock in February 2014, made an estimated $2.7 billion on his position. At the time, Ackman didn't own any shares of Valeant.

Ackman's pursuit of Allergan was seen as controversial. As Business Insider's Linette Lopez wrote, it was viewed by many as a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" situation.

Ackman earlier this year started building a stake in Valeant. He most recently held 19.4 million shares, a stake valued at about $4.4 billion.

In 2014, Ackman was one of the best-performing hedge fund managers, netting 40.4% for the year. A large part of those returns were a result of his profitable stake in Allergan.

This year is a different story for Ackman.

A volatile August wiped out Ackman's gains for 2015. Pershing Square Holdings had been up more than 10.1% through the end of July. When the market tanked, his fund went down with it, dropping 13.1% from August 1 to 25. That put the fund in the red for the year, down 4.3%. Toward the end of the month, the fund pared back some of those losses and finished the month down 9.2%, leaving the fund down 0.1% for the year.

So far in September, the fund has seen gains of 0.4%, leaving the fund up 0.3% for the year. At this point, a number of the big activist funds will have to race to get back their gains for the year.

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While Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer prepare for a semifinals at the US Open in Flushing Meadows, Wall Street's biggest hitters are gearing up for the first annual "Finance Cup" on Saturday.

The Finance Cup will match up Team Wall Street against Team Europe with some of the best players in the financial community in Europe making the trip just for the occasion.

The Finance Cup was co-organized by London-based portfolio manager David Anvig and New York-based investment banker Jeffrey Appel.

Appel, affectionately known as the "Mayor of New York Tennis," has been credited with helping young tennis players land jobs on Wall Street. He's also credited for bringing hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, the founder of Pershing Square Capital, back into the tennis world.

One of the highly anticipated events will be the doubles match between two of the biggest names in activist investing. Ackman's doubles team will go up against Europe's activist investors, Christer Gardell of Cevian Capital, and his partner. 

There will be a number of former pros who now work in finance playing in the tournament, including Mario Ancic, Amer Delic, Scott Oudsema, and Brendan Evans. 

The event will take place at the New York Athletic Club's tennis courts in Pelham at noon on Saturday. 

Next year's tournament will take place in London. 

Here are the rosters:

Team Wall Street: +45 years old

• Richey Reneberg (51): He's a partner and head of investor relations at Taconic Capital. Reinberg is a former #1 ranked doubles player in the world and a previous US and Australian Open winner. He was ranked as high as #20 in singles.
• John Ross (51): He's a managing partner at Fidus Partners, a boutique M&A advisor. He played at Southern Methodist University where he was a three-time All-American. He played in the Junior Davis Cup and was ranked #1 in US for 18 year-olds. He was also a finalist at the Wimbledon junior doubles. He had an ATP ranking as high as #92.
• Steve Hentschel (48): He's the founder and CEO of Hentschel & Company, a boutique investment bank. At Princeton, he captained the team and was an All Ivy player who ranked #16 in college singles. 
• Jeffrey Appel (captain): Appel is a senior managing director at Broadband Capital, a merchant bank. He recently ranked #12 in USA in 45s singles, and #1 in East singles. He captained the 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 Eastern National Team that won USTA National Open Level Championships.
• Pablo Salame (49): He's the cohead of global securities at Goldman Sachs and chairman of the partnership committee. He played for Brown University. He was a Junior French Open player. He lived at the Bollettieri Academy as a kid.
• Walter Dolhare (49): He's the head of the markets division at Wells Fargo Securities. He had an ATP ranking of #708 in singles and #596 in doubles. He played #1 for Notre Dame and was ranked #2 as a junior in Argentina.
• Bill Ackman, cocaptain (49): He's the founder of $19 billion Pershing Square Capital Management. He played tennis in high school. He recently returned to the tennis world and has won a number of tournaments in the Wall Street tennis community.

Team Wall Street: +35-45 years old

• Kunj Majmudar (37): He works for Seven Bridges Advisors. He played #1 singles and #1 doubles at Harvard with James Blake. He was ranked #1 NCAA doubles with James Blake.
• Thomas Blake (39): He works for Jaffe Tilchin Investment Partners. He had an ATP ranking of #264. He played #1 for Harvard.
• Kyle Kliegerman (36): He's a partner at Taconic Capital and head of the equity portfolio. He played #1 at Princeton, and had an ATP ranking of # 1272 in singles and #588 in doubles.
• John Pastel (38): Pastel is a senior institutional salesman at Alliance Bernstein. He played Division I tennis and was an All-American for Davidson.  He had an ATP ranking of #718.
• Jose Blanco-Sanchez (41): He works at Dorset Energy/DM Knott Partners. He played #1 for VCU. He had an ATP ranking of #669. He was also a top ranked junior in Spain.
• Rob Pohly (43): He's the founder of $6 billion Samlyn Capital. He played #1 for Yale.

Team Wall Street: -35 years old

• Amer Delic (33): He works for Meritage Capital. He had an ATP ranking of #60 in singles and #70 in doubles. He's the current Davis Cup Captain for Bosnia. He won a doubles match this year against Hungary. He played #1 NCAA singles for Illinois.
• Mario Ancic (31): He graduated from Columbia Law School and is now at Credit Suisse's investment banking division in the leveraged finance group. He had an ATP ranking of #7 in the world. He was a semi-finalist at Wimbledon, and a quarter-finalist at all four grand slam tournaments. He had a win against Roger Federer at Wimbledon. 
• Brendan Evans (29): He works for Goldman, Sachs in the leveraged finance group. He turned pro at 18. He was ranked #2 in world junior in singles and #1 in doubles. He had an ATP ranking of #117 in singles and #119 doubles. He won three junior grand slam doubles tournaments with Scott Oudsema.
• Scott Oudsema (29): He's a private equity associate at Mid-Ocean Partners. He turned pro at 18 after winning four Junior grand slams in doubles with Evans. He was ranked #1 in junior doubles with Evans. In singles, he had an ATP ranking of #255.
• Jason Pinsky (28): He's a portfolio manager at Nima Capital. He was #1 in US in juniors at one point. He played #1 at the University of Pennsylvania.
• Marc Powers (24): He's an analyst at Samlyn Capital. He played #1 at Yale all four years. He was rookie of year and player of year in the Ivy League the same year.

Team Europe: +45 years old

• Zubin Irani (46): He's a partner at Westbrook Partners and former partner at Goldman Sachs. He was ranked in the top 30 in the world as a junior. He played #1 for Cornell.
• Alfredo Caturano (46): He's a managing director at JP Morgan. He was an Italian Junior Doubles Champion for 18 year olds.
• Christer Gardell, cocaptain (55): He's the founder of Cevian Capital, a $15 billion activist hedge fund. He won a bronze medal at the European Tennis Championships in doubles for +55.
• Luc Pajot (51): He's the co-founder of Brevan Howard, Europe’s largest hedge fund. He ranked #81 in the world last year in the +50 age category.
• Jan Olsson (55): He's the CEO of Deutsche Bank Nordics. He played college tennis at Pomona College

Team Europe 45-45 years old

• Tobias Hildebrand (40): He's the head of HSBC Private Banking in the Nordics. He had an ATP ranking of #427 in singles. He was in the top #250 in doubles.
• Oliver Freelove (38): He works for Marex Spectron. He had an ATP ranking of #535 in singles and was top #250 in doubles. He played for the University of Illinois and was ranked #4 in NCAA in singles. 
• James Reynolds (40): He's a managing director at Goldman Sachs. He was a highly ranked French junior player.
• Thierry Lucas (43): He's the founder at Portland Hill Capital and former partner at Eton Park Europe. He was a top French national junior player. He played in Futures tournaments. He won the silver medal at the Portuguese National Championship in the +40 years old category 2 years ago.

Team Europe -35 years old

• Ludovic Walter (32): He's an associate at Cohen Partners. He had an ATP ranking of #279 in singles. He played #1 for Duke and was ranked #2 in the NCAA in singles.
• Alexander Hartman (35): He's worked at Goldman Sachs in M&A and Altor Equity Partners. He had an ATP ranking of #390 in singles. He was ranked #6 in singles in the NCAA. He played #1 for Ole Miss.
• Luis Rattenhuber (28): He's worked at Goldman Sachs as an M&A analyst. He just started at Harvard Business School. He won a Futures-level tournament in doubles.
• Luben Pampoulov (34): He's the cofounder of GSV Asset Management. He had an ATP ranking of #392 in singles. He played #1 for UCLA and won the NCAA championships team event for UCLA.
• David Anving, captain (33): He's a partner at family office Global Asset Capital in London. He was the captain of the tennis team at the University of Michigan.

Here's the schedule for the matches (There will be three doubles matches in three age categories—45+, 35-45, and 35 and under): 

Round 1:

Ct 1.     Amer Delic/Mario Ancic – Ludovic Walter/Alexander Hartman

Ct 2.     John Ross/Steve Hentschel - Zubin Irani/Alfredo Caturano

Ct 3.     Kunj Majmudar/Thomas Blake - Tobias Hildebrand/Oliver Freelove

Round 2:

Ct 1..    Brendan Evans/Scott Oudsema - Luis Rattenhuber/David Anving

Ct 2.     Jeffrey Appel/Pablo Salame - Christer Gardell/Jan Olsson

Ct 3.     Jon Pastel/Jose Blanco-Sanchez – James Reynolds/Thierry Lucas

Round 3:

Ct 1.     Walter Dohare/Bill Ackman – Zubin Irani/Christer Gardell

Ct 2.     Kunj Majmudar/Rob Pohly - Oliver Freelove/James Reynolds

Ct 3.     Amer Delic/Jason Pinsky - Ludovic Walter/Luis Rattenhuber

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NOW WATCH: More trouble for Subway's Jared Fogle...

Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman might soon need some translators on staff.

Both investors are activists, who take small stakes in companies and then agitate for changes that ought to boost share prices. 

It's a tremendously popular strategy, and activist funds have seen assets under management balloon over the past five years. But that growth means the fund managers are bumping into one another as they hunt for targets.

"In the US market where activism is an accepted part of the investing ecosystem, activists are running the same screens and identifying the same targets," Chris Young, head of contested situations in the M&A group at Credit Suisse, told Business Insider.

"They are not running into one another in a coordinated wolfpack fashion, but by accident. You get that crowded environment."

One recent example is Mondelez, the maker of Oreo cookies. Ackman recently unveiled a big position in the company, joining fellow activist Nelson Peltz. Bank of New York Mellon also found itself squeezed by two activists in quick succession, with Peltz's Trian and activist fund Marcato Capital Management both agitating for change. 

One solution for activists looking for a unique target: To start looking abroad for new opportunities.

"That in turn, logic would dictate, means activists are going to look outside that crowded market, and allocate dry powder to other jursidictions," Young said.

The numbers show what's already underway: In 2015 so far, activists have targeted foreign companies 31 times — up from 17 in all of 2014 and a record high, according to Activist Insight. The number of international activist campaigns has risen every year from 2010 onwards, the data show.

That includes a number of campaigns elsewhere in the Americas, with activists targeting companies listed in places like Bermuda and Canada. But it also includes a number of European targets. 

John Paulson's hedge fund has tried to elbow Dutch drugmaker Mylan into the arms of a bidder. Nelson Peltz started pushing UK-based Pentair to start buying out rivals. Jeffrey Ubben's ValueAct Capital is invested in Rolls-Royce Holding in the UK and have met with chief executive Warren East. 

Dan Loeb has pursued campaigns in Japan, recently announcing a new investment in Suzuki, while Elliott Management this year fought a battle with the family dynasty behind Samsung.  

“We’re seeing more and more of it,” said Ele Klein, partner and co-chair of law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel’s activism practice, adding that "it’s a slow build.”

There are obvious impediments. One is the language barrier, according to Klein. Then there are cultural differences, and differences in shareholder structure.

Corporate behaviour also differs. In the US it isn't uncommon to see an activist load up on a corporate target's shares and push for a buyback. That strategy might not be as prevalent, or as successful, in places like Europe. 

"Dividend payouts are much, much higher in Europe than they are in the US," Ben Laidler, HSBC's global equity strategist and head of Americas research, told Business Insider. 

Then there are macro-economic issues. Many activists consider Europe to be a target-rich environment, but the eurozone crisis stymied activist campaigns in the region. As the region gets back on its feet, activism could pick up there.  

“I see Europe as the next place that gets significant growth,” said activist adviser Steve Wolosky, a partner at law firm Olshan Frome Wolosky. Olshan has worked on more than 50 activist campaigns so far this year. 

"There’s going to be a lot of activity going over there."

The activists will likely have to adapt their playbook: What works in the US won't necessarily work in the UK or in Australia or in Japan. Activists are much more likely to operate behind the scenes outside the US, exhorting company management to change strategy in private. 

Global companies are alive to the threat, and are much more open now to hearing about activism and its leading protagonists than in the past, according to Young at Credit Suisse. 

"Corporates in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Australia are much more interested in getting to know more about activism and how it may take shape in their home markets," he said.

SEE ALSO: One of the biggest private-equity firms is turning into a huge real-estate company

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Hedge fund heavyweight Leon Cooperman, the founder of Omega Advisors, once shared his "characteristics of an outstanding analyst or portfolio manager."

The 14 traits Cooperman looks for when making hires at his firm were featured on a slide in a much larger presentation the billionaire gave to a group of students at Roger Williams University's Mario J. Gabelli School of Business a couple of years ago.

Check it out below and see if you fit the mold.

1. The desire and commitment to be the best.
2. Strong work ethic.
3. Thorough and penetrating analysis/in-depth research with a strong analytical foundation.
4. Good communication skills critical. Can easily write a several page summary of his or her investment views.
5. Have an intensity which leads one to be on top of positions and ahead of the crowd.
6. A good nose for making money, e.g. know a good idea when you see one; make sure the position is meaningful for the organization; know when to back away when the developments are not anticipated—effective risk management.
7. Have conviction with respect to investment recommendations and confidence to add to a position if fundamentals are intact but stock is down.
8. Be aware of not only absolutely P&L but also return on capital. Judicious use of capital.
9. Team player — particularly important in tapping into the expertise of an organization.
10. In a typical year, an analyst should be able to produce at least three or four core investment ideas and 10 to 12 trading ideas.
11. Pride of ownership, sense of loyalty to the organization and commitment to clients.
12. Unbiased and willing to admit mistakes, skeptical, creative, curious, bold/edgy, able to take risk.
13. Can identify his or her comparative advantage and capitalize on this.
14. Identify variant perception.

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Jim Simons, the investor who founded the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, gave a rare interview to TED's Chris Anderson to chat about his stint at the National Security Agency, his hedge fund, and the role scientists can play in finance.

Simons spent time cracking codes at the NSA early in his career before moving on to investing.

He told Anderson that his hedge fund used some of the same skills he used at the NSA to get an early read on what to buy and sell in financial markets.

He said: "When I started doing trading, I had gotten a little tired of mathematics. I was in my late 30s, I had a little money. I started trading and it went very well. I made quite a lot of money with pure luck. I mean, I think it was pure luck. It certainly wasn't mathematical modeling.

"But in looking at the data, after a while I realized: it looks like there's some structure here. And I hired a few mathematicians, and we started making some models — just the kind of thing we did back at IDA [Institute for Defense Analyses]. You design an algorithm — you test it out on a computer. Does it work? Doesn't it work? And so on."

Simons' $22 billion hedge fund is known for bringing in mathematicians, astronomers, and physicists into the trading world.

Simons said: "I didn't really know how to hire people to do fundamental trading. I had hired a few. Some made money — some didn't make money.

"But I did know how to hire scientists because I have some taste in that department. So, that's what we did. And gradually these models got better and better, and better and better."

To read the full transcript of the video click here.

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NOW WATCH: Here’s the sad truth about working over 60 hours a week

Teachers in America are poorly paid relative to their peers elsewhere in the advanced world.

Jim Simons, the legendary founder of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies and a renowned mathematician, is now doing something about it.

Simons has been channeling money to deserving math and science teachers through his philanthropic organization, Math for America.

"We give them extra money, $15,000 a year.We have 800 math and science teachers in New York City in public schools today,as part of a core," said the founder of $22 billion Renaissance Technologies during a rare interview with Chris Anderson.

"There's a great morale among them," he said. "They're staying in the field.Next year, it'll be 1,000 and that'll be 10 percentof the math and science teachers in New York [City] public schools."

Teachers in the US are paid about $56,383 annually — down 1.3% on average from 13 years ago, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Simons started Math for America nearly 20 years ago with his wife, Marilyn Simons. He left Renaissance about six years ago to work with the foundation — though he still has an active role in the hedge fund.

"Yeah — instead of beating up the bad teachers,which has created morale problems all through the educational community,in particular in math and science,we focus on celebrating the good ones and giving them status," Simons said.

To read the full transcript of the video, click here.

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Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has added to his position in Cheniere — a natural-gas exporter that hasn't turned a profit in more than 20 years.

Icahn now owns approximately 22,682,159 shares, or a 9.59% stake in the company, according to an amended 13D filing.

In early August, Icahn first disclosed a stake of 8.18%. A few weeks later, Icahn and Cheniere reached an agreement to add two Icahn nominees to the company's board.

Icahn believes the company is "undervalued." 

Not everyone feels that way.

Just last week, short-seller Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates said that he's short the company.

"We've been pretty negative for the past six months on this LNG [liquefied natural gas] space. We think it's a looming disaster," Chanos said on CNBC.

He explained that it's "a little bit tied to Asia."

"LNG was seen as a savior for a lot of natural gas plays—a way to basically satiate the incredible demand for energy out of Asia," he said. 

"The problem is that everybody figured this out much like iron ore five years ago at the same time. And so, everybody is convinced building these huge LNG plants that are immensely expensive that costs tens of billions of dollar each, many of them in Australia and in the Pacific rim, the problem is that LNG demand isn't growing anymore." 

Shares of Cheniere (LNG) have fallen more than 16% since Icahn first disclosed his stake.

Watch Chanos' CNBC interview below: 

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Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, founder of the $19 billion Pershing Square Capital, has just put out a 29-slide presentation comparing Herbalife to Vemma Nutrition Company.

In late August, the Federal Trade Commission had a federal court halt and freeze the Arizona-based Vemma's assets, accusing Vemma of operating as an illegal pyramid scheme. The FTC says Vemma has lured "college students and other young adults with the prospect of getting rich without having a traditional 9-to-5 job."

This is the sort of allegation Ackman has made against Herbalife.

For nearly three years, Ackman has been publicly crusading against Herbalife, a multilevel marketer that sells weight-loss products, vitamins, and nutritional shakes.

Ackman believes the company operates as a "pyramid scheme" that targets poor people, especially those from the Latino community. Ackman, who is betting that the stock goes to zero, believes that regulators, specifically the Federal Trade Commission, will shut the company down. (The FTC opened an investigation into Herbalife on March 12, 2014).

"Herbalife defenders have gone out of their way to try to show ways the two companies are different," David Klafter, Pershing Square's lawyer, said in a statement. "In reality, they are fundamentally the same."

So far, Ackman's short bet has not paid off. The stock is trading well above the stock price when Ackman's short position became public in December 2012.

We have left voicemails seeking comment from Herbalife's reps.

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Real-estate mogul Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to hike taxes on the "hedge-fund guys" in recent days.

But the Republican presidential front-runner argued Monday night that those hedge-fund managers would actually be better off under a Trump administration.

"The truth is they'll do just fine. They're going to do just fine because we're going to make the country so successful," Trump said at a raucous rally in Dallas, Texas. "They'll end up doing better. They'll end up doing better."

Trump made the comment after vowing to reform the tax system so that the middle class pays less.

"Are there any hedge-fund guys in this room? If there are, you should probably leave right now," Trump joked before recalling an incident in which a friend in the business called to lament about Trump's campaign-trail hedge-fund proposals. 

The billionaire developer has taken a more populist approach to Wall Street than most of his GOP rivals. Trump previously blasted some corporate salaries as a "complete joke" because they are too high. And he has said "the hedge-fund guys are getting away with murder" under the current tax system.

"I have a friend in the hedge-fund business. Not really a friend. Not actually a nice guy. But he'd be good representing us [in my administration], I will tell you," Trump recalled at the Monday rally. "Because the time I finish, he may not have much of a hedge fund left."

Trump added that his not-quite-a-friend in the hedge-fund business barely paid any taxes despite making incredible amounts of money.

"I said, 'What did you make last year?' He said, 'About $250 million.' Can you believe this? This is serious. I said, 'Oh, that's a lot of money. What did you pay in taxes?' He goes, 'Practically nothing.' That was a couple years ago," he continued. "I never forgot it."

SEE ALSO: New batch of polls finds Donald Trump surging and Hillary Clinton in 'trouble'

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Texan hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass isn't backing down in his big war against the pharmaceutical industry. 

"I'm not a quitter," he told CNBC's David Faber.

Earlier this month, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, part of the USPTO, denied another one of Bass' petitions to review a patent for a drug. This time it was for Tecfidera, a multiple sclerosis drug licensed by Biogen.

Bass told Business Insider at the time that it appeared to him that the USPTO and Michelle Lee are "running a kangaroo court."

Lee is the head of USPTO, and a former deputy general counsel for Google. Google played a role in lobbying for the America Invents Act to be passed, the law which permits pretty much anyone to file an inter-partes-review (IPR) challenging a patent.

Bass told CNBC that he thinks Lee "could be influencing the judges there and playing a political game and not allowing our challenges to get heard on the merits alone. They would like to have our challenges thrown out." 

We reached out to Lee for comment. A spokesperson for the USPTO said they do not comment on PTAB cases.

Since the beginning of the year, Bass has been filing IPR petitions against numerous drugmakers' patents while also betting against their stocks. So far, Bass has filed 36 IPRs as part of his so-called "activist short strategy."

To do this, he formed the Coalition for Affordable Drugs. He even set up a separate investment vehicle at Hayman Capital.

He told CNBC that he is going to file IPRs on less than 1% of the drugs that exist. 

"The ones that we are going after are the kind of egregious examples of evergreening, which end up costing the public at large tens of billions of dollars a year in prescription drug prices."

So far, the strategy isn't playing out in Bass' favor. He's had petitions for two drugs tossed out before a trial could be held.

Bass told CNBC that the two Acorda IPRs were thrown out on a "technicality" and that with the Biogen IPR the PTAB " just got it wrong." Bass has already refiled the Acorda IPRs and he's reviewing his options for Biogen's Tecfidera.

"In the end, we are going to fight this fight. We're well funded and we have all the time in the world the way that we have set this up. And we want our challenges heard on the merits."

"And if we win, drug prices get lowered for everyone. So it's a fun fight so far." 

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NOW WATCH: Here’s the sad truth about working over 60 hours a week

Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman, founder of $19 billion Pershing Square Capital Management, slammed the US government Tuesday night for keeping all the profits from mortgage guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Ackman called it "the most illegalact of scale" he has ever seen the US government do.

Ackman spoke Tuesday evening during a panel at Columbia University for the launch of Bethany McLean's new book "Shaky Ground." McLean and former Fannie Mae CEO Frank Raines were also panelists. Ackman, however, did most of the talking.

During the financial crisis, Fannie and Freddie needed massive bailouts and were taken over by the government. It has been seven years since the financial crisis and the companies are still in a state of conservatorship. Today, the government-sponsored enterprises make billions in profits, all of which goes directly to the Treasury.

Ackman, the largest shareholder of Fannie and Freddie, and other investors are suing the US government for taking property for public use without just compensation.

He said: "And there is no way they will not be allowed to stand, from a legal point of view. And the reason for that is if the US government can step in and take 100% of profits of a corporation forever, then we are in a Stalinist state and no private property is safe — and take your money out of every financial institution, put it into gold or Bitcoin and just get the hell out because we're done, maybe the clothes on your back, but other than that nothing is safe."

In Ackman's view, Fannie and Freddie are vital to the US economy. Right now, he said, the biggest threat to the US middle class is rising rental rates.

"If you don't own a home, and you're a member of the middle class, you have a problem," he said. "This is the biggest threat to the middle-class livelihood is that your cost of living, the roof over your head is not fixed, it's floating."

Ackman said Fannie and Freddie were set up to make middle-class housing more accessible. Together, they have enabled widespread availability and affordability with the 30-year, fixed-rate, prepayable mortgage — a system that has been in place for 45 years.

Ackman said he's optimistic about the future of Fannie and Freddie. He has said before that with the right reforms they could be worth a lot more. He has given the GSEs a price target ranging between $23 and $47, well above the current $2 range.

Watch the full panel below:

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