Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - November 2007 - (Page 44)

says Michael Findlay, a director at Acquavella Galleries in New York. “Their desire to get them drives up the prices, maybe faster than they otherwise would be.” No hedge fund manager has attracted more attention for the prices he has paid than SAC’s Cohen, 51, who applies the same perfectionism and speed to collecting art as he does to trading. His collection includes a Jackson Pollock drip painting that he bought for $52 million, a Francis Bacon Screaming Pope ($16.5 million), de Kooning’s Police Gazette ($63.5 million) and Warhol’s Turquoise Marilyn ($80 million). Not someone who does things on a small scale, Cohen also has a sizable art library in his home in Greenwich, Connecticut — 4,000 volumes of dorm. After he moved to Chicago to start the aptly named Citadel in 1990, he began building his fund, combining the computer programming skills he had honed as a teenager, a talent for math and a distaste for attention. He excelled at convertible arbitrage and added a variety of strategies, including energy trading and credit derivatives. Evolving into a broader business, Citadel has developed technology and administrative back-ofﬁce services for other funds, more in line with the offerings of a traditional ﬁnancial institution, as Grifﬁn, 39, is rumored to be readying the ﬁrm for an IPO. Grifﬁn’s interest in art has evolved too. He began collecting conservatively, buying works by impressionists. But since his 2003 marriage to Anne Dias, who has her own hedge Artist: Chris Ofili Title: Afrodizzia (detail) Adam Sender paid $1 million at a 2005 Phillips de Pury auction for this work, made from oil paint, glitter, resin, map pins and elephant dung — a material that the Britain-born Oﬁli began using after a 1992 trip to Zimbabwe. Artist: Damien Hirst Title: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living Steven Cohen bought this piece for a reported $12 million from Charles Saatchi in 2005, then spent $100,000 to have it refurbished. A new tiger shark had to be caught, off the coast of Queensland, and shipped to Hirst’s studio in England — a two-month trip. which he bought as a set to start the collection. Probably the most famous (or infamous) work in Cohen’s collection is The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 1991 work by Hirst that consists of a female tiger shark encased in a glass tank of formaldehyde. The piece had to be reconstructed with a new shark and formaldehyde because the first one was rotting as a result of insufﬁcient preservation. KEN GRIFFIN WANTS to create a new American empire. He started early, trading from his Harvard University 44 • INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR’S ALPHA • NOVEMBER 2007 fund, Aragon Global Management, their combined tastes have led them toward more modern art. Currently, the Griffins’ collection includes Paul Cézanne’s Curtain, Jug and Fruit Bowl, bought in 1999 for $60.5 million, a Claude Monet Water Lilies, an Edgar Degas dancer sculpture and Johns’s False Start — all top-quality pieces. Several sources have said that Griffin, who declined through a representative to be interviewed for this story, takes “a painfully long time” when choosing artwork and has difﬁculty making decisions, typically asking advice from many people before committing. He and his wife are building a OFILI: COURTESY PHILLIPS DE PURY & CO.; SOLD MAY 12, 2005; HIRST: ROBERT CAPLIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - November 2007

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - November 2007 Contents Letter from the Editor Longs & Shorts Pension Corner: Patriot State The Good Guys: College Connection Interview: Currency of Change Cover Story: Comeback Kid Strategies: Masters of Art Research Center: Alpha Awards: Top Technology Providers Top Analysts Alpha Bytes: Critical Choice Unhedged: Commentary: Banking on a Bubble

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - November 2007

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