You kind of had to root for the Amaranth guys, right? I mean, sure, we weren’t totally psyched about everything thing they did—hushed voice: Solengo—but after the wipe out a lot of very good people found themselves without desks, jobs or reasons to take the train to Greenwich. Even the wild and wooly Calgary office—Brian Hunter, please, just call us, we’ll totally get along—had a lot of good lads who had to polish their resumes when the great “meltdown” (or, if your prefer, “blowup”) sunk the firm.
So it’s with a heavy heat we note that Moore Capital Management has closed its Canadian hedge fund unit. Moore’s Canada team was based out of out Toronto and employed a number of former Amaranth traders. It’s fate was apparently sealed after its mangers lost 15 percent in November on stock and convertible-bond positions.
The Canada team was led by Manos Vourkoutiotis, who cut his teeth at Amaranth. Apparently anumber of other traders were also former Amaranth boys. They managed $1 billion for Moore funds before last month's decline, according to two people who Bloomberg describes as “people with knowledge of the firm.” Moore has about $13 billion, so a 15 percent decline in $1 billion of its assets under management is not exactly something it could afford to shrug off.
Moore Capital Closes Canadian Unit Following Losses [Bloomberg]
Posted by anon, Dec 13, 2007 12:05PM
No reversion to the mean? Nov was tough if you had a long-only play in HF or otherwise...
Maybe these crackerjacks are in fact a few fries short of a happy meal. I'm sorry, Toronto (and Canada), to hear you get a bad rap because of these bad boys.