Daniel Loeb: fiery activist goes on a buying spree

Daniel Loeb is known as a sharp-tongued investor who buys stakes in companies and then shakes them up. But the pandemic caught him flat-footed and he has changed tack.

Daniel Loeb © David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(Image credit: Daniel Loeb © David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Since launching his flagship fund, Third Point, in 1996, activist investor Daniel Loeb has regularly chalked up stellar average annual returns of about 20%. The pandemic looked as if it would put an end to that winning streak – Loeb candidly admits he was “caught flat-footed by the virus”, says CNBC. But he has spent the past quarter rejigging his portfolio and, assuming the current tech-led wobble doesn’t turn into a full-blown rout, may well end the year sitting pretty.

Loeb appears to have set aside his interventionist instincts in favour of a full-blown push into ecommerce and streaming. “He took advantage of jitters around China’s relationship with Hong Kong and the US” to balance an existing large investment in Amazon with a $600m-plus punt on Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com. But the deal that seems to please him most is a $613m investment in Disney made on the back of the media giant’s move into content streaming, which he says is Disney’s “biggest market opportunity ever”.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.