FACTBOX-Hedge fund managers name long, short bets

NEW YORK, May 28 (Reuters) - Some of the country's biggest
and best-known hedge fund managers on Wednesday shared their
best investment and short-selling ideas with an audience of
some 1,200 hedge fund executives.

The annual Ira Sohn Investment Research Conference raises
millions of dollars for pediatric cancer research, but its high
wattage speaker list also moves stocks. Last year Greenlight
Capital's David Einhorn predicted that Lehman Brothers had more
troubles than they had let on, four months before the
investment bank filed for bankruptcy

Event speakers this year included William Ackman of
Pershing Square Capital Management; Kynikos Associates' James
Chanos; Paul Singer of Elliott Management; Lee Hobson of
Highside Capital; Mark Kingdon of Kingdon Capital Management;
and Stephen Mandel, chief executive of Lone Pine Capital.

DAVID EINHORN, GREENLIGHT CAPITAL

Idea: SHORT Moody's Corp (MCO.N)

Einhorn, who manages $5 billion, said the parent of Moody's
Investors Service undercut the value of its primary business --
assigning grades to bonds -- after giving perfect AAA ratings
to fallen giants like insurer AIG (AIG.N), mortgage banker
Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and bond insurer MBIA Inc (MBI.N).

"If your product is a stamp of approval where your highest
rating is a curse to those that receive it, and is shunned by
those who are supposed to use it, you have problems," Einhorn
told some 1,200 hedge fund executives at the annual Ira Sohn
Investment Research Conference.

Moody's shares fell as much as 8 percent Thursday to its
lowest in more than a month. [ID:nN28345077]

STEVE MANDEL, LONE PINE CAPITAL

Idea: BUY Strayer Education (STRA.O)

Steve Mandel's Lone Pine Capital, one of the largest U.S.
hedge fund firms, expects Strayer Education Inc, a for-profit
company operating colleges for working adults, to expand its
business eight-fold over the next decade.

"Strayer will be a far larger business 10 years from now,
with cash flows a multiple of today's levels," Mandel said at
the annual Ira Sohn Investment Research Conference, where 1,200
hedge fund executives heard presentations on investment and
short-selling ideas. [ID:nN27289363]

BILL ACKMAN, PERSHING SQUARE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LP

Idea: BUY General Growth Properties Inc (GGWPQ.PK)

Ackman, the biggest shareholder in bankrupt mall operator
General Growth, said he could gain 13 times his investment
after the company reorganizes.

General Growth has more assets than liabilities, a key to
other reorganizations in which equity holders retained some or
all of their investment, Ackman said.

Extending most of the company's $27.3 billion in debt for
seven years would be enough to resolve its problems, he said.
[ID:nN28356964]

MARK KINGDON, KINGDON CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

Idea: BUY Bank of America Corp (BAC.N)

Kingdon said the extraordinary decline in Bank of America's
share price has left it at below 5 times normalized earnings,
and at about 1 times pro-forma tangible book.

Assuming Bank of America gets to what Kingdon calculates
will be normalized earnings in two years, the hedge fund
believes the stock will be trading above $20 a share in 12
months.

PAUL SINGER, ELLIOTT MANAGEMENT

Idea: Limit use of leverage by funds, banks

Idea: Less aggressive government intervention

Government regulators should clamp down on leverage among
banks and investors to prevent another credit crisis, said
Singer, one of the most successful hedge fund managers for the
past 32 years.

Singer observed it was highly regulated banks that fueled
last year's market implosion because they ramped up their use
of leverage, or borrowed money, for trading and investments.

"There is one kind of regulation that will be useful and
necessary and that is a global scheme of limitations on
leverage," Singer said. "The stark truth is it was not hedge
funds that blew up the world, it was regulated entities or
their affiliates," he said.

He also said government must resist the temptation to use
its power in ways that could hurt the economy in the long term.

DAVID SOKOL, MIDAMERICAN ENERGY

Idea: US housing woes far from over

Sokol, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc's (BRKa.N)
MidAmerican Energy Holdings and a contender to succeed Warren
Buffett, warned the U.S. housing market still has a ways to go
before bottoming out. His utility and pipelines company owns
the No. 2 U.S. real estate brokerage, title and mortgage
lending firm.

"As we look at the economy, I have to be honest: we're not
seeing the green shoots," Sokol said.

If anything, the glut of housing supply could grow larger
as a new wave of foreclosures and pending sales breaks on the
market. Backlogs of unsold houses is probably twice as large as
reported by government agencies and could get worse as more
foreclosures hit. As a result, existing housing markets may not
be balanced until the middle of 2011.

JOSEPH HEALEY, HEALTHCOR

Ideas: BUY Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX.N)

BUY Hologic (HOLX.O)

BUY Life Technologies (LIFE.O)

Healey, whose $3 billion firm is the largest investor in
health care, drug and biotech, said these stocks would take off
as investor worries about potentially harmful new regulation
under Obama eventually fade -- much as they did during the
Clinton Administration. He sees health care growing to
represent 20 percent of U.S. GDP by 2018.

In terms of specific stocks, Healey said Valeant has a
promising epilepsy drug, retigabine, that is significantly
undervalued by Wall Street. Healey sees the stock doubling to
$40 to $50 a share in the next 12 to 18 months

Hologic is a medical technology company that produces items
used in medical research. He sees the shares doubling from
current levels.

Life Technologies, created by the merger of Invitrogen and
Applied Biosystems, has 60 percent upside thanks to merger
synergies and higher government spending on health care
research.
(Reporting by Joseph A. Giannone and Herbert Lash; Editing by
Tim Dobbyn)