Vultures Circling

Nice Business Week article up right now about Vulture Investors. A few nice excerpts:

While Wall Street panicked over the fate of Bear Stearns (BSC) in mid-March, hedge fund manager Philip A. Falcone enjoyed a notably successful week. The founder of Harbinger Capital Partners made tens of millions of dollars on an earlier wager that Bear and other financial stocks would collapse.

...

Falcone is a Midas of Misery. With $19 billion—nearly 760 times the grubstake he started out with seven years ago—he is snapping up troubled assets in bankruptcy, shorting distressed bonds, and using huge stock positions to agitate for change at underperforming companies. His holdings read like a who's who of market castoffs: media companies, utilities, and steelmakers. Last year Harbinger netted $11 billion, thanks in large part to Falcone's gutsy bet against all things subprime. His personal windfall of $1.7 billion made him one of the highest-paid hedge fund managers in 2007.

Check it out