A Shade of ORANGE
Morning commuters walk on Wall Street in New Yorks financial district in this file photo. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters) Activist hedge fund firm Orange Capital to shut Lawrence Delevingne Reuters Published Wednesday, Feb. 03, 2016 1:57PM EST Last updated Wednesday, Feb. 03, 2016 1:58PM EST Comments AA Orange Capital, the activist hedge fund firm led by New York-based real estate investment manager Daniel Lewis, is shutting down after a year of poor performance, according to people familiar with the situation. Its main hedge fund was down 7.4 per cent net of fees in 2015 through November, according to investor information seen by Reuters. Performance for December and January was not available. A group of stocks in Oranges portfolio, worth about $1.3-billion as of Sept. 30, according to a public filing, declined substantially over 2015. Bellatrix Exploration, a Canadian oil and gas company where Mr. Lewis is a director and had pushed for change, saw its stock drop about 60 per cent. NorthStar Asset Management Group, a New York-based real estate and investment manager, fell 46 per cent. And Amaya Inc., a Canadian entertainment technology company, declined nearly 40 per cent. Mr. Lewis was not immediately available for comment. A spokesman for Bellatrix declined to comment and InnVest Real Estate Investment Trust, another Canadian company that Mr. Lewis is a director of, did not respond to a request for comment. Orange, co-founded by Russell Hoffman, its president, had otherwise produced strong returns. Its main fund averaged annual returns of 9.7 per cent since inception in mid-2005. That compares to a 5.15-per-cent gain over the same period by the Absolute Return Event Driven Index, which tracks similar funds.