Daniel Seth Loeb (born December 18, 1961)[1] is an American investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist.
He is the founder and chief executive of Third Point, a New York-based hedge fund focused on event-driven, value-oriented investing with $4 billion in assets under management, as of December 2023.
[7] There he took AP classes, started a skateboard company, and was nicknamed "Milo Minderbinder" by one of his teachers (after a character in the novel Catch-22 who had a fascination with the stock market).
[9][10] At Columbia, he was a classmate of future President Barack Obama, whose presidential campaign he later offered significant financial support.
[8][11] By his senior year at Columbia, Loeb had made $120,000 in the stock market, but lost it all on an investment in a firm called Puritan-Bennett Inc.
[23] On May 3, 2012, Loeb revealed that the new CEO of Yahoo!, Scott Thompson, did not have a computer science degree, as had been commonly assumed for many years.
[30][31][32] On June 18, 2013, Third Point LLC announced it had increased its stake in Sony to 70 million shares, or about 7 percent, valued at $1.4 billion.
[34] Actor George Clooney, whose Smokehouse Pictures production company has a contract with Sony's entertainment division, publicly opposed the proposal.[why?
In February 2014, Sony said it would sell its PC business to buy out Japan industrial Partners Inc. and split its TV manufacturing unit into an independently operated entity.
[37] In October 2014, Loeb sold his shares in Sony and later wrote, "They have a long way to go and we continue to believe that more urgency will be necessary to definitively turn around the company's fortunes".
These concerns are summarized as, "we are troubled by the Company's chronically weak operating margins and deteriorating competitive position relative to Christie's, as evidenced by each of the Contemporary and Modern art evening sales over the last several years.
[40] After Sotheby's instituted a "poison pill" to stop Third Point from growing its position past 10%, Third Point brought a lawsuit[41] in the state of Delaware; however, on May 3, 2014, Vice Chancellor Donald Parsons of the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled[42] that the auction house was justified in its use of the corporate action.
Prior, Fanuc seldom made direct contact with its investors but in March 2014, the company decided "it would start talking to shareholders" and "return some of its cash to them."
Loeb met with Fanuc's President, Yoshiharu Inaba, with encouragement from Japan's government officials, and was deemed a top prospect for "shaking up Japanese firms.
"[47][48][49] In January 2007, when John Higgins became CEO of Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Loeb bought into the biotech firm to cut its losses and grow revenue.
[54] In June 2017, Third Point disclosed its ownership of approximately 40 million shares of Nestlé, making it the company's sixth-largest shareholder according to Standard & Poor's Global Market Intelligence.
"[4] On Wall Street, Loeb has a reputation for "financial savvy" and for "his withering criticism of corporate executives who are unfortunate enough to stumble in his sights".
"[4]Often these letters cite the results of investigations he has ordered, detailing management decisions and actions he considers detrimental to shareholder value.
We are a bunch of scrappy guys from diverse backgrounds (Jewish, Muslim, Hindu etc) who enjoy outwitting pompous asses like yourself in financial markets globally.
[59] He wrote to Irik Sevin, CEO of Star Gas Partners, in February 2005, calling him "one of the most dangerous and incompetent executives in America" and accusing him of "ineptitude" and of using the firm as his "personal 'honey pot'".
[64] He is a Trustee of Mount Sinai Health System, the Manhattan Institute, the U.S. Olympic Committee and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2013, Loeb was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v. Perry, in support of same-sex marriage.
[72] Loeb was involved in a long-standing WhatsApp group chat from October 2023 through early May 2024 with some of the United States' most powerful business leaders with the stated goals of "chang[ing] the narrative" in favor of Israel and "help[ing] win the war" on U.S. public opinion following Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel.
[73] Group members also held a video call in late April 2024 with New York City Mayor Eric Adams in an effort to, according to reporting by The Washington Post, "pressure Columbia’s president and trustees to permit the mayor to send police to the campus" to shut down violent antisemitic protests threatening dissenting students and faculty.
[80][81] In October 2011, Loeb challenged three former Navy SEALs to run the "MightyMan" Half Iron Triathlon with him and his team in Montauk, New York.
[85][86][87] Loeb and his wife donate to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, Chai Lifeline, and the Michael J.
[88] He is a prominent art collector and the walls at his Park Avenue office are covered with paintings", according to a New York Times August 26, 2013 article.
He is concerned with those unfairly imprisoned and successfully pushed for the release of Bernard Noble in April 2018, who served more than 7 years in prison for possessing two marijuana joints.