Beam,
I am not interested in reading articles about hedge funds. I am asking for you to clarify your statement regarding hedge funds as "evil doers".
I am well versed on the topic of hedge funds. I know that they are not agents of some mysterious industry that lurks in the shadows, looking to destroy public companies. They are simply an alternative asset class serving accredited investors.
The original definition of a hedge fund surrounded the industry's propensity to invest in assets that often traded inversely to the stock market, providing their investors a means of hedging against market risk. However with modern finance and technological advancement the industry has fragmented greatly and today a "hedge fund" can mean virtually anything. In fact, as of last month - "hedge funds" were net-long U.S. equities; a position that flies in the face of the traditional definition of a "hedge fund".
Cornell, I guess, might fall under the definition of a hedge fund. I consider Cornell to be a "vulture capital" fund. It seems that Cornell is quite active in toxic financing of struggling companies. Cornell seems quite adept at finding stocks that have moved higher in spite of underlying fundamentals. Cornell provides funds to these companies in consideration for certain rights which create an incentive to short-sell the company's stock.
It's a win-win for all but the retail shareholder. The executives of the public companies receive a cash windfall that more often than not is used to subsidize their salaries while Cornell receives certain securities that guarantee a return on investment in conjunction with providing a opportunity to profit as the stock price regresses back toward it's fundamental reality.
