What is your favorite example of a controversial PE/activist deal that worked?

This could be forcing austerity on a city/country over an infrastructure investment, a corporate raider acquiring a massive company then ripping it apart to sell off the pieces while laying off thousands of workers with no warning, or a fund acquiring what is essentially a monopoly on some niche sector/industry and absolutely bleeding it dry. Whatever would've gotten negative headlines and possibly government/international attention and/or intervention.

My personal favorite is Elliot Management seizing an Argentinian warship after they failed to make bond payments. Not quite PE, but since they seized a sizeable asset from a sovereign nation I think it should count. Not only did they make billions, the UN ended up having to get involved to make them return the warship. Talk about a big 🍆

How one hedge fund made $2 billion from Argentina’s economic collapse

When Paul Singer’s Elliott Capital launched a 15-year battle to wrestle billions out of Argentina for lapsed debt payments, it wasn’t the first time the hedge fund had taken on a foreign government.

But few engagements have turned into such a high-profile international scuffle.

In order to collect the decade-old debt, Singer’s fund tried to claim money deposited by the country’s central bank in the U.S. and Europe. And it sought to seize two satellite launch contracts between Argentina and SpaceX.

Elliott Capital’s arguably most audacious scheme came in 2012, when the Argentine navy’s proud three-masted tall ship pulled into the port of Tema in Ghana with more than 250 crew members on board, recent graduates of the Escuela Naval de Argentina participating in an annual training session. The Libertad was worth a fraction of what the hedge fund claimed that it was owed, but the 100-meter ship quickly became a chip in an international fight over billions in old debt.

Elliott Capital persuaded a Ghanaian court to seize the vessel so it could collect on its debt. Argentinian officials would lash out at Elliott as “unscrupulous financiers” and after more than two months the ship was released.

Four years later, though, Elliott Capital and several other hedge funds and creditors are about to get their satisfaction.

The Argentine government agreed to a settlement that would allow Singer’s fund to walk away with $2.4 billion for bonds that the government had failed to pay on, according to court documents. The bonds had a face value of $617 million, but had been purchased for about $117 million, according to an analysis of court records by Martin Guzman, a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Argentina’s Senate is scheduled to sign off on the deal this week.

It would be a handsome, and historic, payoff for one of the most well-known brawlers in the New York financial world. And, according to industry experts, the case could serve as a template for similar investors in the years to come. By relentlessly pursuing Argentina in courts around the world, and even taking their battle to the U.S. Supreme Court, Elliott and the other creditors have shown the power that hedge funds can wield in poor countries, critics of their strategy say.

 ELLIOTT MANAGEMENT LOSES ITS ARGENTINIAN WARSHIP ON UN ORDERS

In the tug of war between Argentina and Paul Singer’s Elliott Capital Management, Argentina has scored a goal. A UN court has ordered Ghana to release the military warship that has been detained at Ghanaian shore for more than two months now. The UN International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, located in Hamburg Germany, ruled that military vessels cannot be impounded in debt disputes. Ghana has been ordered to release the ship unconditionally, the court said, “Argentina should not [pay any] bail, bond or security”.