U.S.-based Viking Global Investors has reopened its flagship long/short hedge fund for new capital having closed it more than a decade ago, according to three people familiar with the matter, as industry-wide equity hedge fund returns strengthen. Led by co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Andreas Halvorsen, Viking ended June with $26 billion in public equity assets under management, according to it website…
A former employee of George A. Weiss and his GWA firm has sued the investment manager for ERISA violations ranging from self-dealing to a lack of diversification in the company’s 401(k) plan. The retirement plan used its assets “to advance the business interests of GWA LLC and its founder, George A. Weiss, over those plan participants,” said the complaint in Beth Andrew-Berry vs. George A. Weiss and GWA LLC…
The former director of human resources at alternatives specialist Weiss-Multi-Strategy Advisers has sued the company, adviser subsidiary and retirement plan trustee George A. Weiss. Hedge fund manager GWA, LLC and George A. Weiss, founder and CEO of the company’s investment adviser subsidiary Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers LLC, are facing a class action complaint filed on July 24 alleging violations of fiduciary duty and prohibited transactions provisions of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act by fiduciaries for the GWA, LLC 401(k) profit sharing plan…
Brian Higgins has helped guide King Street Capital Management to pounce on some of the most high-profile distressed debt events of the past two decades, from Lehman Brothers Holdings to Revlon Inc. to WeWork Inc. Now the $23 billion hedge fund’s co-founder is gearing up with his colleagues to seize on opportunities as rising interest rates and a weakening economy pinch companies laden with debt taken on when borrowing costs were much lower…
Hedge fund manager GWA LLC and its founder George A. Weiss was hit with a proposed class action claiming the entirety of its retirement plan is invested in alternative, proprietary investments including its flagship Weiss Multi-Strategy Partners hedge fund. The lawsuit, filed Monday in the US District Court for the District of Connecticut, claims the entirety of the company’s $103 million retirement plan is invested in two proprietary investments: the Weiss Multi-Strategy Partners (Cayman) Ltd. hedge fund and a mutual fund that largely replicated the hedge fund’s strategy. This “highly unprecedented” decision to invest the entire plan in alternative …
Some big hedge funds are launching this year, and those hedge funds are already hiring. But if you want to work there, it will help to work for a hedge fund already. That’s what we’ve found, at least, looking at some of this year’s big launches. The biggest hedge fund launched in 2023 has been SurgoCap Partners, with around $1.8bn in assets…
Blackstone Group LP is to invest $150 million in London-based Astaris Capital Management which will be split between the firm’s existing hedge fund and a new pool of capital with a drawdown structure, two sources said. Astaris specializes in event-driven credit and equity investments in Europe and was founded in 2020 by Martin Beck, who previously worked at private investment firm Centerbridge Partners and at JPMorgan…
When Tiger Global Management’s Scott Shleifer donated $18 million to Florida’s Palm Beach Day Academy just months after his four kids enrolled, proud native New Yorker and hedge fund manager Roberto Mignone reacted smugly. “You’ll be back Shleifer,” Bridger Management’s Mignone commented on the Instagram post announcing the gift. “I’ll be waiting for you…”
Brian Higgins and O. Francis Biondi Jr., co-founders of the standout hedge fund King Street Capital Management, have done few interviews, especially compared to some other giants of the industry. So when a camera-primed Higgins signed into a Zoom call for this story and discovered he was conversing with a generic avatar, he was “really disappointed.” “I shaved; I put a nice, clean shirt on. I got the right lighting. I was going to do makeup, but [the public relations firm] thought that would be a bit too contrived,” Higgins said jokingly. Even among hedge funds, King Street has historically been especially discreet. When Institutional Investor published an in-depth article about the firm in 2012, Biondi and Higgins declined numerous requests to comment. And when reporters occasionally obtain King Street’s investor letters and publicize gains and losses, the co-founders never speak to them on the record…
