Harbinger Capital Takes Position in Zapata

In a 13D filing with the SEC, Harbinger Capital Partners has revealed a new position in Zapata Corporation (ZAP) due to activity on June 17th, 2009. This is a brand new position for the hedge fund and it now shows a 51.3% ownership stake with 9,888,684 shares.

As defined in the 13D, Harbinger has

acquired beneficial ownership as a result of receiving certain proxies to vote the Shares. Until the Closing (as defined in Item 6), the Funds will not acquire a pecuniary interest in any of the Shares.

Then, once we went down to examine Items 4 and 6 of the filing, we saw that none other than the Glazer Family was also involved in the transaction. The Glazer Family owns professional sports franchises such as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL and Manchester United FC of the English Premier League. The filing itself is quite lengthy and those interested in every detail of the situation can read the 13D here.

Harbinger has been quite busy over the past year as it has been re-tooling its portfolio and fighting off a massive decline in assets. It was ranked #1 in the top 10 asset losers, losing 60.8% on a year over year basis. As we've been covering on the blog, Harbinger has been decreasing its Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF) position, selling off some of its Calpine (CPN), and is seeing bidders for its NYT (NYT) stake, among many other portfolio moves.

Harbinger's Offshore fund finished -22.7% for 2008. It was up 0.95% for January 2009, 4.64% for February, and +0.74% for March, leaving it at +4.06% year to date as of then. And, we also got word that Falcone would be returning to his roots in terms of investing style and would be opening a new fund. For more background on Falcone and Harbinger, head here.

Stay tuned as we'll be covering Harbinger's entire portfolio in our hedge fund portfolio tracking series soon.

Taken from Google Finance:

Zapata "owns 98% of Zap.Com Corporation, a public shell company. The Company is focused on acquisition opportunities in the United States and also outside of the United States. Zap.Com does not have any existing business operations as of December 31, 2008. It is searching for assets or businesses that it can acquire, so that it can become an operating company and may also consider developing a new business. During 2008, the Company did not generate any operating revenues."

Comments

[Pax Americana:]

Thanks" Market Folly" your doing "sterling work" as usual, wll be
Investigating [zap] for curiosity sake.....happy Hedging!

Jun 23 12:04 PM

[Market Folly:]

thanks "Pax"

and user "Re ORDER" please stop spamming all of my articles with that link over and over again... gets annoying. Thanks.

Jun 24 12:27 AM