GLG style: A backdoor, and funny trades

Somebody blabbed. Takeover vehicle's shares fly late Friday

GLG, the hugely successful—$20 billion in assets—but regulatory-challenged London-based hedge fund, will slip through the backdoor to list on the New York Stock Exchange. Funnily enough, the shares of its reverse takeover vehicle, the Amex-listed SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) Freedom Acquisition Holdings Corp (FRH), magically gained more than 8 percent Friday, on almost 10 times their average volume, mostly late in the day when the major indexes were heading off a cliff.

Freedom will pay $1 billion in a transaction that values GLG at $3.4 billion, before taking its bat-and-ball to the other side of Broadway. GLG is already 20 percent owned by Lehman Bros.

The flagrantly suspicious trading in FRH Friday is ironic, or perhaps even iconic. GLG was sanctioned by British regulators last year, and French regulators last week, for separate incidents of what boiled down to insider trading; GLG plans appealing the French ruling.

GLG Partners to Access Public Markets Through Reverse Acquisition
Press release
Jun. 25 2007