Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 49)

the New York ofﬁce of London-based GLG Partners and is No. 1 in Media. “The goal is to be as proﬁtable as possible.” Since joining GLG in 2004, Slabin says he has been able to focus more on the short-term prospects of individual stocks than he could in his previous role as an equity analyst for Merrill Lynch, adding that sell-side analysts can spend months researching the health of a speciﬁc sector without ever picking a single stock in their ﬁnal reports. Having success at a hedge fund is all about the bottom line. “This industry is driven by performance and our ability to generate returns for the ﬁrm and for investors,” says Matthew Simon, a Capital Goods/Industrials analyst for Citadel who ranks second in the sector. Simon, who began his career as a junior analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, joined Citadel in 2004 from Chicagobased private equity ﬁ rm Madison Dearborn Partners, where he covered Media and Telecommunications. When hedge fund analysts prove their ability to generate moneymaking stock picks, the rewards can be sizable. For example, the median annual compensation for a senior analyst with less than ﬁve years’ experience at a hedge fund ﬁ rm was $811,510 in 2006, according to the ﬁndings of the 2007 Alpha Hedge Fund Compensation Report, which surveyed more than 800 employees at roughly 600 hedge fund ﬁrms in 30 countries (Alpha, April 2007). Comparatively, the CFA Institute’s 2007 Member Compensation Survey found that the median The Leading Firms Rank Firm 1 2 3 4 4 6 7 7 7 SAC Capital Advisors Citadel Investment Group Galleon Group GLG Partners UBS O’Connor Adage Capital Management Balyasny Asset Management Decade Capital Diamondback Capital Management Viking Global Investors Weighted total * 16 13 8 3 3 2 1 1 1 Which hedge funds have the best analysts? These ﬁrms have the most top-rated analysts, according to their sell-side counterparts. Total positions 6 6 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 First place 5 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 Second place 0 3 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 Third place 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 7 1 1 0 0 1 * To determine the weighted totals, a rating of three is assigned to a ﬁrst place, two to a second place and one to a third place. Andrew Slabin • GLG Partners Media A NDREW SLABIN TOOK THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED, and that really has made all the difference. When Slabin graduated from the University of Vermont in 1993 with an undergraduate degree in ﬁnance, most college graduates interested in ﬁnancial ser vices were joining investment banks. But instead of following the pack, Slabin took a junior analyst post at Boston’s John Hancock Funds, where he covered Media and Entertainment. “It was really interesting to see how people invest, and Boston was a great place to be in the early 1990s,” says Slabin, 37. Five years later he was given the opportunity to learn the sell side of the business as a junior analyst working with longtime Institutional Investor–ranked ﬁrst-team analyst Jessica Reif Cohen at Merrill Lynch. “I was a jack-of-all-trades, master of none,” says Slabin. The connections he amassed at Merrill and his intricate knowledge of the industry are a huge part of the reason GLG Partners was interested in him. He jumped at the opportunity to return to the buy side for a position in the London-based ﬁrm’s New York ofﬁce. Slabin, who works on GLG’s North American Opportunities Fund, is described by his sell-side counterparts as “an excellent example of what the best of the buy side should be.” In particular, sell-siders point to his strong interviewing skills and his willingness to work with analysts on both the buy side and the sell side. In recent months he has taken a fairly bearish approach to the Media category — a sentiment he is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, in light of the impact the three-month writers’ strike in Hollywood and fears of a recession have had on the industry. Two stocks he does like are Minneapolis’s Dolan Media Co., which has beneﬁted from the rise in newspaper advertising of foreclosures, and Centennial, Colorado– based National CineMedia, which dominates movie screen advertising. FEBRUARY 2008 • INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR’S ALPHA • 49

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - February 2008

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - February 2008 Contents Letter from the Editor Longs & Shorts Pension Corner: Alternative Perspective The Good Guys: A Simple Plan Cover Story: Energy and Commodities: Fueling Opportunity Regulation: Energy Trading: The Brawl on the Hill Interview: Master of Values Regulation: Hedge Fund Registration: Way Out West Research Center: Top Hedge Fund Analysts Alpha Bytes: Rocket Man Unhedged: Commentary: Structured for Success

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - February 2008

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