FultonView Research Short Case For American Capital Ltd. (ACAS)

On 12-9-2015, a newly formed, anonymous firm called FultonView Research published a report on American Capital, Ltd., that said the company's asset values were inflated and unreliable. FultonView said that proposals from activist investors were based on the assumption that the company's reported NAV was a true reflection of underlying assets, but it said that American Capital's reported NAV was a product of the company's management abusing Level 3 subjectivity. FultonView additionally said that American Capital had unloaded a number of investments into private equity funds it managed, which FultonView said then underperformed, and it said that American Capital then bought some of the assets back and wrote them down in "a shell game to justify its book value." FultonView...