Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 46)

Top 50 Moneymakers 40 percent of BVI’s assets. The Raptor Global Fund, Tudor’s long-short equity fund managed out of Boston by James Pallotta, lost 7.8 percent in 2007 through a combination of bad plays. Some investors cashed out — at least $1 billion was withdrawn from Raptor — but the Greenwich, Connecticut–based mother company had $12.7 billion in assets at year-end, down from $14.9 billion a year earlier. Third Point Ultra, returned 26 percent. Though he is best known for writing harsh (some would say insulting) letters to corporate executives, the New York–based manager made most of his money last year off nonactivist efforts: plays on Deutsche Börse, MasterCard and Reliance Capital, the Indian ﬁnancial services giant. On the short side, Loeb scored on housingrelated ﬁnancials and brokerages. But Loeb is still known mostly for acting up. In June he quit the board of Massey Energy Co., citing its “misguided insistence on keeping” Don Blankenship, the embattled chief executive (the company was involved in a notorious mine accident last year in Utah). Loeb has recently moved uptown in more ways than one, shelling out $45 million for a 10,000-squarefoot penthouse on Central Park West, leaving his $12 million West Village townhouse behind. Overall, Third Point has about $5.7 billion in assets under management. an 18-year-old in 1982, Hwang could barely speak English, but that didn’t hold him back. Six years later he had graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles, earned an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and become one of Julian Robertson Jr.’s Tiger Management analysts. Hwang met Robertson while working as a broker at Hyundai Securities; Robertson hired him to help navigate the South Korean market, which the legendary money manager was convinced was profoundly undervalued at the time. At Tiger Asia, founded in January 2001, Hwang has scored a 40.4 percent annualized return, including 45 percent last year. A good part of his remarkable success can be attributed to South Korea’s historic opening of its market to foreign investors in 1992. 34 Eric Mindich Eton Park Capital Management $290 MILLION In 2007, Eric Mindich rewarded investors with a 35 percent net return in his Eton Park Master Fund, helping his ﬁrm’s assets grow to $11 billion from $6.3 billion. Mindich, 40, a former whiz kid who at 27 was the youngest partner ever at Goldman, Sachs & Co., launched Eton Park Capital Management in 2004 with $3.6 billion. Mindich is looking to do more distressed investing: Late last year his New York–based multistrategy ﬁrm agreed to buy R6 Capital Management, a $300 million debt-oriented hedge fund run by another Goldman alum, Ralph Rosenberg. 38 Richard Perry Perry Capital $250 MILLION 37 Paul Touradji Touradji Capital Management $265 MILLION 35 Alec Litowitz Magnetar Capital $280 MILLION Alec Litowitz runs about $9 billion these days, way up from the $1.7 billion he started with when he launched Evanston, Illinois–based Magnetar in 2005. Most of his gains came in 2007, when he returned 25 percent. Litowitz, 41, played both sides of collateralized debt obligations last year. He bought the riskiest CDO tranches when the getting was good, but hedged those positions by betting against the less risky portions. When the market collapsed, Litowitz made more off the hedges than he lost on the risky long positions. New York–based commodities specialist Paul Touradji, 36, had a 40.8 percent net return last year on his $3.5 billion Touradji Global Resources Master Fund. The former Tiger Management Corp. trader will invest in anything from oil to corn to equity derivatives; he did especially well last year in energy, metals and agriculture. His fund struggled early in the year, rising by just 1 percent through May, then surged 11 percent in June. Early this year Touradji had — with leverage — 69 percent of the fund’s exposure in commodities, 42 percent in public stocks and 8 percent in private equity. Touradji, who recently opened an ofﬁce in Singapore, told clients in March that a “buying orgy” in commodities had inﬂated prices. 36 Daniel Loeb Third Point $270 MILLION 38 Bill Hwang Tiger Asia Management $250 MILLION The largest of Dan Loeb’s four funds, Third Point Offshore, returned 17.44 percent, and one of his smaller funds, Bill Hwang’s success is a classic immigrant rags-to-riches story. When he came to the U.S. from South Korea as Richard Perry, 52, has never had a down year, but 2007 was a little slower than some. Perry, a former hotshot trader at Goldman, Sachs & Co., has managed to have doubledigit returns in 14 of the 19 years since he left Wall Street to start investment ﬁrm Perry Partners. That includes the roughly 12 percent gain in 2007 at his New York– based hedge fund, Perry Capital, which now has $14 billion under management. At Goldman, Perry worked on Robert Rubin’s famed risk arbitrage desk and helped make several hires who also went on to hedge fund glory, including Daniel Och (No. 41 on this year’s list), Eric Mindich (No. 34) and Thomas Steyer (No. 43). He is an arbitrageur-turned-multistrategist and is a member of the board of directors for Sears Holdings Corp. Last summer Perry showed his loyalty to his former employer when he joined a group of prominent investors, including billionaires Eli Broad and Maurice (Hank) Greenberg, that injected $1 billion into Goldman’s Global Equity Opportunities hedge fund following its steep losses in the ﬁrst two weeks of August. 46 • INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR’S ALPHA • APRIL 2008

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

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - April 2008 Contents Letter from the Editor Longs & Shorts Pension Corner: Here to Eternity The Good Guys: Voice of Hope Cover Story: The Kings of Cash Where the Money Is Into the Light Interview: Proceeding with Caution Strategies: A Convenient Truth Alpha Bytes: Village Voice Unhedged: Commentary: No Time for Complacency

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - April 2008

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