Each business day HedgeCo.Net keeps you informed with the top hedge fund industry news, opinion and insight from around the globe. From the latest hedge fund launches, to the impact of regulation, competition, and investor activism - we track the topics and people that make a difference to you.
Hooker-loving ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer knocked the socks off the students at his lecture Tuesday at City College.
Students attending his law and public policy course laughed and even applauded as Spitzer delivered a lively talk that cited big thinkers ranging from philosopher John Stuart Mill to Bruce Springsteen.
Ashley Dupre, the call girl who brought Spitzer down, was not in the syllabus, but the self-proclaimed “Sheriff of Wall Street” was happy to recall how he went after the fat cats at Goldman Sachs.
Bloomberg – Three traders from Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP and RBS Greenwich Capital Markets started a government-bond hedge fund named for one of their favorite songs by the Who.
5:15 Capital Management LLC, named for the track “5:15” on the British rockers’ 1973 album “Quadrophenia,” will begin trading today with about $60 million, according to Morris Sachs, one of the founders, who said the fund will grow to $100 million. Joining him at the Greenwich, Connecticut-based fund are E.G. Fisher, 40, and Rob Wahl, 42.
“We’re all Who fans and love that tune,” Sachs, the fund’s chief risk officer, said in a telephone interview. “What are we going to do, try to find another name for the Greek god of money?”
AlterNet – Jack Nash, a key pioneer of the global hedge fund industry, passed away this past summer. Much of the rest of the industry may soon join him six feet under. The industry, one insider told the Financial Times last week, has embarked on "a sort of death march."
Hedge funds now appear to be the next chunk of high finance headed for meltdown. They may actually do their melting before most Americans even know what they are.
A quick primer: Hedge funds have been operating in the financial world’s immensely lucrative shadows ever since Jack Nash co-founded Odyssey Partners, the granddaddy of the modern hedge fund, in 1982, just one year after Ronald Reagan slashed tax rates on America’s highest incomes.
The new tax rates — the lowest the rich had seen since the early 1930s — meant that wealthy Americans suddenly had plenty of new cash sloshing in their pockets. Nash promised these affluents high annual returns if they gave him their money to invest — and then delivered. Over the next 14 years, Odyssey delighted investors with a 24 percent average annual return.
