SEC probing whether activist investors secretly acted jointly: source

(Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether some activist investors secretly acted jointly to target companies, one hedge fund industry source said.

The SEC's enforcement division recently opened multiple investigations and sent requests for information to a number of hedge funds, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier, citing people familiar with the matter. (http://on.wsj.com/1eRTPKi)

The names of the funds and the companies they targeted could not immediately be ascertained.

The SEC declined to comment.

Federal securities regulations require investors who jointly agree to buy, sell or vote securities to disclose those arrangements, and to designate themselves as a group if they together own at least 5 percent of a company's stock or are soliciting votes from other shareholders.

(Reporting by Avik Das in Bangalore and Nadia Damouni in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)