Some Like it Hot: Pirate Capital Initiates Stake in Starwood Hotels & Resorts

In analyzing Pirate Capital's recent 13F for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2006 we found an interesting new holding for the shaken-up activist hedge fund. It appears, Pirate initiated a new 595,600 share stake in Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (HOT).

The stake is small at just 0.281%, but with Tom Hudson's recent commitment to stream-line the fund we find it interesting that he is putting on a new trade. As we have been reporting for some time, Pirate has mainly been liquidating all but a few positions and Bloomberg recently reported that the fund's assets fell from $1.8 billion in August 2006 to $1.1 billion. The hedge fund disclosed 35 positions for the quarter ended June 30, 2006, that is now down to 19 positions.

Comments

[twoeyes:]

Pirate just finished it's purchase of Intrawest a little while ago. My un-researched guess would be that this little stake in HOT is probably something that Intrawest had in it's holdings. A quick Google for Intrawest + Starwood shows at least one partnership, which is not unexpected given both companies sizes and similar markets.

2007 Feb 20 03:33 AM