SON OF A BOTCH!

Hedgie titan’s scion creates e-mail gaffe

Paul Singer’s son may get sent to bed without dinner.

Gordon Singer, who works out of the London office of his billionaire father’s activist hedge fund, Elliott Management, mistakenly sent an e-mail meant only for friendly eyes to a rep from Dutch paint conglomerate AkzoNobel — one of the hedge fund’s targets.

“We need to be ready to roll,” the younger Singer wrote in a group e-mail early Tuesday morning that accidentally copied Akzo’s investor relations rep Lloyd Midwinter.

Singer was referring to the hedge fund’s attack plan after calling for a special meeting to oust Antony Burgmans, chairman of the company, which deals in speciality chemicals as well as paint.

Elliott wants Akzo to consider a $26.3 billion takeover bid from Pittsburgh-based paint and materials giant PPG Industries and thinks Burg- mans is blocking the deal.

In addition to outlining tactics for future dealings with Akzo, Gordon’s e-mail, first reported on by the Financial Times, instructed an Elliott employee to alert PPG that the hedge fund had requested the special meeting.

The Elliott employee responded that he had already made arrangements for a compliance officer to join him on a phone call with PPG “so there is no issue with getting cleansed to trade in the near future.”

The “cleansing” was a measure to ensure that Elliott and PPG weren’t unintentionally sharing inside information about Akzo.

Nevertheless, Akzo was concerned and alerted regulatory authorities in the Netherlands about Elliott leaking “potentially price sensitive information” to PPG. Akzo also demanded, in a press release Wednesday, that Elliott disclose its communication history with PPG.

“It would be preferable from PPG’s perspective if AkzoNobel would speak with us rather than about us,” PPG said in a statement released Wednesday,

PPG added that “there are currently no agreements or arrangements, in whatever form, between PPG and Elliott Advisors.”

Reps from Akzo did not immediately respond to requests to comment. Elliott declined to comment on the e-mails.