BY AZAM AHMED
Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
Philip A. Falcone, the manager of Harbinger Capital Parters
8:58 p.m. | Updated Harbinger Capital Partners, the large hedge fund run by the embattled manager Philip A. Falcone, has sold off a significant chunk of its stake in The New York Times Company, bringing its ownership in the newspaper company down to about 2.6 percent.
The fund sold a block of seven million shares at $8.13 a share for a total of about $57 million on Monday, according to a securities filing.
In late 2007 and early 2008, Harbinger bought about 20 percent of the company’s Class A shares at more than double what it sold the shares for this week.
Before the sale, Harbinger was the company’s second-largest shareholder, behind the mutual fund company T. Rowe Price Associates, with a 7.4 percent stake.
A spokesman for Harbinger said that the sale was “a very small part of the portfolio and part of standard portfolio management.”
Harbinger's S.E.C. Filing
The Securities and Exchange Commission requires investors to disclose when they have more than 5 percent of a company. Harbinger’s sale will bring it under that reporting threshold.
From September through December of 2009, Harbinger sold more than 10.15 million shares of the 28.5 million shares it originally bought, at a significant loss.
Mr. Falcone has been under pressure recently after the disclosure that federal authorities were looking into a $113 million loan he took out against his firm’s Special Situations funds last year.
The loan occurred when investors in the fund were not allowed to redeem money from it, and authorities from the S.E.C. and the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan are examining whether he disclosed the loan in a timely fashion, according to a person who has been interviewed by regulators about the matter.
Those authorities are also looking into whether certain investors were allowed to withdraw money from the fund at a time when others were not because the fund was under strain, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak on the matter and asked for anonymity.
Mr. Falcone has said the loan was approved by his lawyers and has denied that any investors were given preferential treatment.
Harbinger and Mr. Falcone rose to prominence in 2007 by betting big against the mortgage market.
A series of redemptions have brought the firm’s assets under management down to about $9 billion, from about $26 billion. "
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