Four former employees of Tom Hudson's Pirate Capital have banded together to launch a new fund. Late last summer several analysts and other Pirate employees left the fund after coming to the conclusion that working for Tom Hudson kind of sucked.

Two former analysts and a portfolio manager from activist hedge fund Pirate capital have joined a new hedge fund started by another ex-Pirate colleague. Andrew Stotland, a former marketer at Tom Hudson’s Pirate Capital, formed FrontFour Capital Group and launched the event-driven fund at the beginning of the month.

Zachary George and David Lorber, former analysts at Pirate, and Carl Klein, the firm’s former fixed income portfolio manager, have now joined FrontFour Capital Management. The new hedge fund is expected to launch in the coming months. Its seed investment came from Weston-Atlas Partners, a joint venture between London-based alternative asset management firm Atlas capital Group and Weston Capital.

“New York-based FrontFour employs an event-driven strategy, investing across the capital structure, pairing fundamental analysis with the identification of specific catalysts,” Stotland said. He left Pirate Capital in August. He was responsible for raising the majority of the firms assets. George, Lorber and Klein were part of a group of staff members that left Pirate in September. They departed just as Pirate saw its performance fall below its historically high returns and the firm closed its funds to new investors so that it could control its overall growth. They are now principals at the new hedge fund.

ex-Pirate's Launch new Hedge Fund [HedgeCo.Net]