Hanger Orthopedic Group, Inc. (HGR) recently made three acquisitions totaling $10.7 million in annual net revenues. These acquisitions are: Creative Orthotics & Prosthetics, Inc.; Custom Orthopedics of Wyoming; and certain orthotics and prosthetics assets from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. These acquisitions will enable Hanger to add patient care centers to its existing markets in New York, Wyoming and Pennsylvania.

Hanger will fund these acquisitions from internally generated cash flows. It is estimated that the acquisitions will be accretive to Hanger’s earnings once the integration process is over.

Ramius Capital's most recent portfolio holdings reveal that the hedge fund manager has shifted its portfolio focus to drug manufacturers. The firm’s exposure to US Equity as of June 30th was $366mm, which is down from $788mm at the end of last year. Of the $136.41mm in added positions over the second quarter, $92.62mm was spent by Ramius Capital on healthcare giants Wyeth (WYE) and Schering Plough (SGP). At the same time, the hedge fund dumped its ETFs and opted for investing in individual equities, selling out of its entire $44.21mm of SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) as well as $22.58mm of SPDR Energy Sector (XLE). Overall, the hedge fund sold $92.54 in ETFs over the quarter.

Heeding the widespread call for future rebounds in commodity prices, the firm opened two new oil company positions and a coal company position. Also in line with the rest of the firm’s portfolio, two new information technology companies were added. The largest newly opened positions include:

This is the 1st Quarter 2009 edition of our ongoing hedge fund portfolio tracking series. Before reading this update, make sure you check out the Hedge Fund 13F filings series preface.

Next up, we have Maverick Capital. Lee Ainslie started Maverick Capital back in 1993 with $38 million. Nowadays, the fund is worth over $5 billion. Ainslie, like many of the other fund managers we've profiled, has a background rooted in learning from legendary great Julian Robertson at Tiger Management. Just yesterday we ran a profile on Robertson and took a deeper look at his current big investment. These proteges (nicknamed 'Tiger Cubs') learned from the best and have had great success running their own funds. Some of the other Tiger Cubs include Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital, John Griffin's Blue Ridge Capital, and Andreas Halvorsen's Viking Global.

Q1 2009 Earnings Call

May 06, 2009 4:30 PM ET

Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

February 12, 2009 4:30 pm ET

In the ongoing battle between Orthofix (OFIX) and its dissident shareholder, Ramius LLC, to seat four new dissident directors to the board, both companies fired shots across each other's bows in an attempt to further their respective positions. On January 28, 2009, OFIX sent a letter to Ramius protesting the nomination of Peter A. Feld in which it notes that Mr. Feld is neither a partner nor a senior executive listed on Ramius’s website. Additionally, the letter notes that he is only 29 years of age and has little business or healthcare experience and that his “tenure on the boards of public companies is not only limited, but has on more than one occasion coincided with or been followed by significant adverse events for those companies”. Orthofix noted Mr. Feld’s participation on the boards of CPI Corp., a portrait studio company and Sharper Image, which filed for bankruptcy protection shortly after Mr. Feld left its board.

The most surprising turn of events in our opinion was the Schedule 14A filing made by Ramius on January 22, 2009 in which it said that it would not try to unseat Alan Milinazzo, Orthofix’s CEO, as it had previously sought to do. It seems to us that the whole exercise of changing the management and recovery strategy being pursued by Ramius becomes irrelevant and point less if the “alleged” architect of the problem remains on the board of directors. In response to OFIX’s January 28, 2009 letter, Ramius announced that it had received written requests from the holders of approximately 55% of the Company’s common stock to call a Special General Meeting of Shareholders. With the threshold at only 10% and with Ramius holding 5.3% of the shares, we had predicted in our post of January 13, 2009 that this would likely be the case.

On December 3, 2008, Ramius LLC sent a letter to Orthofix International N.V. (OFIX), requesting that its Board of Directors immediately engage a strategic advisor to explore and execute a sale or disposition of Blackstone at the highest possible price. Ramius also threatened to call a special shareholders' meeting to replace four members of the Board of Directors to force changes in the already announced restructuring of Blackstone and Orthofix’s capital structure.

Making good on its threat, on December 10, 2008, Ramius announced that it had filed a Preliminary Consent Solicitation Statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to solicit written requests from shareholders of Orthofix, to call a special general meeting for the purpose of making substantial changes to the composition of Orthofix’s board of directors. Ramius proposes to remove James F. Gero, Peter Hewet, Alan Milinazzo and Walter P. Von Wartburg from the Company’s ten-member board of directors and replace them with four new directors.

Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

November 6, 2008, 4:30 pm ET

Q2 2008 Earnings Call

August 8, 2008 11:00 am ET

Q1 2008 Earnings Call

May 1, 2008 11:00 am ET

Orthofix International NV (OFIX)

Q3 2007 Earnings Call