As those of you’ve been paying very careful attention may have noticed, Wall Street is pretty into tech these days. Morgan Stanley is underwriting every single IPO available, Goldman Sachs has money in Mark Zuckerberg’s poking machine and LinkedIn is making Jim Cramer’s head explode. Hedge funds, however, want more. While Peter Thiel famously invested in Facebook way back when, and Tiger Global has poured cash into a whole bunch of sites, the industry as a whole wants a piece of these companies and not just after they become (alleged) successes.
A handful of hedge funds already had a history of such investments, but the activity has increased recently as investors try to cash in on the surging valuations of Facebook Inc., LinkedIn Corp., Zynga Inc., Groupon Inc. and a smattering of smaller companies…In the past 12 to 18 months, firms including D.E. Shaw & Co., Maverick Capital, Brookside Capital and Tudor Ventures, as well as hedge-fund investor James Pallotta, have joined Tiger in putting more money into promising yet risky tech companies. Starting last summer, Tiger began ramping up its investments in private companies in India, China, Brazil, Russia and other emerging markets. This year alone, it has invested in six Indian start-ups, including consumer electronics retailer LetsBuy.com, online fashion site Exclusively.in, and online bookseller Flipkart…Edward Lampert, the hedge-fund investor who controls Sears Holdings Corp., has become interested in private tech companies too. He recently assigned Daniel Levine, an analyst at his hedge fund, ESL Investments, to look for opportunities.
Sounds great, right? Well it would be except for the fact that some people are apparently too good for hedge fund money. Despite the fact that the firms are willing to throw hundreds of millions at them and open doors to sophisticated investors, these people are “suspicious” and skeptical of what hedge funds want and what their intentions are and whether or not they are literally the devil. Continue reading »
With Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani. Continue reading »
After he graduated from Columbia Business School last June, Adam Wyden probably had a bunch of offers to mull over from various employers. What he really wanted to do, though, was be a hedge fund manager. So he figured he’d just start his own shop, having the experience of trading stocks for his own account as Wharton undergrad (Class of ’06) and a summer internship with DE Shaw under his belt. Interested in getting a piece of the action? Continue reading »
The hedge fund has taken a £100m short position in the bank. Continue reading »
The tradition of having your wedding announced in the Times Sunday Style section is a long and venerated one. Not to minimize the whole finding of one’s soul mate aspect, but for many, the announcement is reason they’re getting married. So it had to have chafed pretty badly for one couple when the husband’s employer, a shop known for its intelligence but apparently not so much its sensitivity, ruined the whole thing. Continue reading »
As you have most likely heard, yesterday afternoon, DE Shaw cut ten percent of its workforce. The news probably suggests that anyone who’s been trying to make a jump who’d been considering shooting the hedge fund a resume ought to shelve that idea for now. Looking down the road, however, the firm will at some point start hiring again. And when it does, should you get a call back, there’s a question you may not get in interviews with inferior firms that you’ll want to be prepared to answer.
An acquaintance looking for a new gig had dinner with a friend whose buddy worked at DES. It was an informal meeting, though knowing he was rep’ing the firm, the Shaw guy came armed with what is presumably the hedge fund’s typical spiel. The conversation went like this (this was just after they’d sat down): Continue reading »
Just 36 hours ago, a bunch of DE Shaw employees were under the impression they had jobs. Yesterday afternoon, they were informed such was not the case, when the hedge fund canned ten percent of its staff, including partners and portfolio managers. Right about now they’re probably very confused and very angry. At least half of those axed likely attempted to find out the home addresses of whoever gave them the boot and half of those probably went to far as to show up at said houses and thinking about knocking on the door to have words. At least one lawn jockey was probably pissed on. But people, please. Lay off David and Co’s asses. They’re having just as bad a week as you. Continue reading »
And if you thought it was just secretaries bearing getting the boot, think again! Continue reading »
As previously mentioned, I did a little interview with CNBC’s Trish Regan. We discussed, among other things, her time at DE Shaw and whether or not Charlie Gasparino and Dennis Kneale are necrophiliacs. Continue reading »
The men, women and vampire squids at Goldman Sachs posses a lotta talent among them. Many of them can tie a maraschino cherry stem into a knot in under ten seconds. They pioneered the buddy system between the prime brokerage and prop desk so as to maximize front-running of clients. A not insignificant number of them are quite skilled at charades. Sportsmen, however, they are not. This has been evident at many an impromptu stick ball game among the banks (don’t feel bad about that Viniar, it could have happened to anyone) and continued to be clear last night at the JPMorgan Corporate Challenge, where Goldman failed to place any employees in the top 5. Putting a fine point on it was one JPMorgan staffer who it should be noted snapped the photo above, and the ones later on of Team GS circle JO&C’ing in the bathroom of the bar everyone congregated at. But hey, look! Moragan Stanley won something! Continue reading »
Last week we mentioned that Goldman Sachs, in spite of the assumption it was immune from taking part in peasant-like drinking games, had played host to at least one confirmed icing on its premises at 200 West Street. For the uninformed, “Icing” is the new game the kids are playing these days, wherein you surprise a “bro” with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, any time, any place and he has to get down on one knee and chug it, unless he happens to whip out his own bottle, in which case, you got owned and have to drink both. Naturally we assumed that such events were taking place on Wall Street, but at places where it wouldn’t be such a huge deal if you got caught by someone much more senior than yourself, such as Citi, where they’re practically daring their employees to pull this kind of shit. It wasn’t that we imagined Goldman Sachs had more important things to do– front-running clients is really not as difficult as people would you have you think, seriously, try it some time– but that they’d have more sophisticated drinking games to play. The same thinking went into our answer to the question, “Do you think there’ve been any icings at DE Shaw,” which meant that for only the second time ever, we were proved wrong.
Fortune has learned of icings at Florida-based investment bank Raymond James (RJF) and New York City hedge fund D.E. Shaw.
Continue reading »
