WASHINGTON, March 13  Lehman Brothers, the global investment bank, bought a 20 percent stake on Tuesday in the management companies of D. E. Shaw, a $29 billion hedge fund that is among the largest and oldest funds in the business.
The acquisition continued Lehman’s strategy of buying minority stakes in hedge funds to gain exposure to the fast-growing alternative asset arena.
Lehman’s purchase was announced on the same day as the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on hedge funds. The chairman of the panel, Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in his opening statement, “We need to know more†about them.
Investment banks have been on a tear, scrambling to buy, build or invest in hedge funds  lightly regulated, privately managed pools of capital  in an effort to capture the lucrative fees.
