Short Seller Soren Aandahl Chases Targets With New Hedge Fund
Sofia Horta e Costa, 03 May 2021
Activist short seller Soren Aandahl is launching his first hedge fund, with a mandate to find accounting malpractice and overvalued stocks all over the world.
The Blue Orca Global Activism Fund starts trading Monday with $25 million in assets under management, according to Aandahl, who founded Blue Orca Capital three years ago in Austin, Texas. He says he’s lining up another potential $30 million in committed capital. The fund will pursue targets globally, using a market-neutral strategy to seek profits regardless of whether global stocks are in a downturn or uptrend, said Aandahl.
Blue Orca rose to prominence in 2018 when its criticism of corporate governance at Samsonite International SA led to the resignation of the luggage maker’s chief executive officer. Aandahl’s firm has since targeted Kasen International Holdings Ltd., China Medical System Holdings Ltd., Ausnutria Dairy Corp. and Anta Sports Products Ltd. in Hong Kong, adding to his count of 37 publicly-disclosed ideas in a decade-long career as an activist short seller. Aandahl calls 17 of those “zeros,” or stocks that have lost almost all their value.
“We’re ready to publish new ideas right off the bat,” he said by phone last week. “The plan is to look for really fraudulent names, as well as ideas where we think there’s a strong accounting angle.”
