Philip Falcone

The Phantom

Falcone, 46, has been dubbed the "Midas of misery" for taking lucrative short positions in the shares of struggling banks including HBOS and Wachovia. He lives in a 27-room townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side bought for $49m. The youngest of nine children, he grew up in Minnesota and was a young ice hockey star dubbed "the phantom" for his ability to elude defenders.

Kenneth Griffin

The Boy Wonder
As a Harvard University student Griffin installed a satellite dish on his dorm to help him trade options. His Citadel Investment Group, founded in 1990, has 1,200 staff and was tipped as the next Goldman Sachs, but its two main funds have lost 35% of their value in the market turmoil. Griffin, 40, was a high-profile donor to the presidential campaign of fellow Chicago resident Barack Obama.

James Simons

The Mathematician
Born in 1938, Simons was a maths prodigy. He worked as a codebreaker for the US defence department in the 1970s and set up his Renaissance Technologies fund, which has some $20bn under management, in 1988. Known as a "black box" fund, it uses opaque quantitative techniques. Its core Medallion fund rose 49% in the year to September. Simons has a $600m charitable foundation.

John Paulson

The Sub-Prime King
Low-profile Paulson made $3.7bn last year betting against sub-prime mortgages. A 52-year-old father of two, he was raised in the New York borough of Queens, gained an MBA from Harvard and has a $41m lakeside retreat in the Hamptons. His firm, Paulson & Co, manages $35bn and its advisers include Alan Greenspan. Reports suggest a bumper year, with the firm’s main funds rising by between 15% and 25%.

Read Complete Article

Tags: citadel-investment-group, disagreements, endowment-fund, fame, federal-election-commission, fellow-shareholders, loan-originators, market-abuse, market-losses, million-21, msn-moneycentral, raanan-agus, settlement-system

Caymen Net News – Insolvency lawyers in Scotland should take an interest in a bankruptcy case in the Cayman Islands involving two Bear Stearns hedge funds and an American judge with the wonderful name of Burton Lifland.

The issue is this: where did a business that has gone bust have its main commercial interests?

The two funds were involved in what is now a familiar story amid the carnage on the world financial markets. They bet heavily on sub-prime mortgages and, as defaults increased, creditors demanded their money back leaving the funds with no cash.

Read Complete Article

Tags: barclays-bank-plc, carnage, charlie-mccreevy, eliot-spitzer, jay-westbrook, la-caixa, last-november, lawsuits, liquidation, loan-originators, mps, severe-losses, third-party

West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Recruiters at WhiteRock Group are seeing increased opportunity for job-seekers and hiring firms.

The meltdown in sub-prime mortgages, and the ensuing credit crunch, has led to uncertainty and turmoil throughout financial markets worldwide, says WhiteRock, but as with any deal, what’s bad news for one party is often very good news for another.

"There’s never been a better time to look for a job on Wall Street, or the Asian financial markets," says Gustavo Dolfino, founder and chief executive officer of WhiteRock Group. And amazingly, there’s never been a better time to be looking for talent either."

To understand why the recruitment business is booming even as the industry appears to be retrenching, one must understand that the overheated markets of the past few years have actually made recruiting more difficult.

Dolfino, who was quoted last week in Crain’s New York Business as well as the Wall Street Journal and is frequently interviewed for market perspective by CNBC, Bloomberg News and other financial news services, explains.

"With markets soaring these past few years, the price of top talent went through the roof. Everyone had golden handcuffs. Nobody wanted to work for anything but a top-tier firm. Now, you’ve got a situation where suddenly all those people who were ‘unhirable’ might be available. And they don’t necessarily want to work at a top-tier firm – those are the ones who’ve been in the paper everyday, mostly with bad news. Right now, the smart money is picking people up."

Dolfino pointed out that the greatest growth is currently in Asia, especially China, where "If you can get a CFO on the phone, you can get a job." He adds, "And we have everyone’s phone number."

To keep up with this still exploding demand, WhiteRock Group has opened three new offices, all in Asia, and brought on more top recruiting talent. The company is now nearly fifty professionals strong and expects to add to that number before year’s end.

Alex Akesson

Editor for HedgeCo.Net
Email: alex@hedgeco.net

HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!

Tags: absolute-return, alan-greenspan, angela-merkel, atticus, boston, chicago-business, franchise, loan-originators, prison-term, qualitative-assessment, volatility, welcome-relief