When Stanley Druckenmiller announced earlier this week that he’d be shuttering his fund, Duquense Capital, and retiring from the business after 30 years, many wondered which luminary would be next to pack it in. Steve Cohen? Paul Tudor Jones? Larry Robbins? So far, just one: Paolo Pellegrini. Continue reading »
Paolo Pellegrini
The following post is by Dealbreaker reader and commenter Infinite Guest.
Whether they could have avoided it, I don’t know–today’s Securities and Exchange Commission acts like a wounded animal–the management of Goldman, Sachs & Co. made a strategic error by failing to cultivate a closer relationship with the new regime. That much is evident from the fact that the suit came as a surprise. Chairman Schapiro is quite capable of partnering with industry: Had Goldman done better, earlier, there might never have been a lawsuit. Popular wisdom says that Goldman should settle. I disagree. Although both parties understand that cooperation beats enmity, the SEC chose not to cooperate; and now, Goldman’s best strategy is to respond in kind. Continue reading »
Hey boss! How ya been?
If you’re Paolo Pellegrini,* tipping off the SEC to your former employer’s role in today’s Goldman case, according to CNBC’s Steve Liesman.
Earlier: Who needs John Paulson? Not Paolo Pellegrini.
*Whose attitude resulted in being more encouraged to leave the hedge fund (as opposed to leaving on his own terms) than has been suggested in various stories quoting P-squared (which, BTW, is what he calls himself).
UPDATE: A spokesperson for P-Squared has released the following statement:
In 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approached Paulson & Co., among a number of financial institutions, as part of a publicly disclosed inquiry into collateralized debt obligations. At that time, Paolo Pellegrini was a portfolio manager for Paulson & Co. and was familiar with the CDO market. Paulson & Co. provided the SEC with the names of employees, including Mr. Pellegrini, who might be interviewed as part of the SEC’s inquiry. Mr. Pellegrini cooperated fully with the SEC ‘s inquiry as did a number of his colleagues at Paulson & Co.
Mr. Pellegrini left Paulson & Co. at the end of 2008 to form his own investment firm. Mr. Pellegrini maintains an amicable relationship with Mr. Paulson and remains grateful for the professional opportunities extended to him by Mr. Paulson, for whom he has the highest regard.
This would not be the time he asked for more money to do less work but rather when he pulled John into a room to show his former boss how he was going to make a metric fuck-ton of money for the firm, which Bloomberg gets into in a profile of P-squared (which, awesomely, is actually what he calls himself):
“After hearing a lot of arguments for and against the presence of the bubble, we had a simple and clear insight of our own to go by,” Pellegrini says.
He recalls that Paulson broke into a smile when he showed him the proof that houses were overpriced. “John doesn’t smile,” Pellegrini says. “It felt great.”
Careful analysis shows that this statement is not exactly true. Paulson JP practically grins when seated next to Jack Welch’s German doppelgänger. No matter– Pellegs made Paulson smile once and then the two got back to making money and taking money, only occasionally glancing up to motion to a life-size cutout of Alan Greenspan and go “look at this idiot” to each other.
Fast-forward to the end of 2008 (and a bunch of dollars later) and Pellegrini, by several accounts, proposed to Paulson and Pals that his new purview permit him to indulge himself a bit more. Basically Pellegs wanted the go-ahead to spends his days waxing poetic on larger geopolitical issues that required constant consultations with peers like Henry Kissenger, David H. Petraeus, Tila Tequila, etc, and to spend less of his time slicing numbers to figure out if Ben Bernanke was going to survive the next option arm reset (he also wanted more money to do so). The two parties diverged from there, with P-squared being more encouraged to leave the building (as opposed to leaving on his own terms) than is necessarily suggested here. It’s not that JP and Pals were opposed to P^2 drastically redefining what he did for the firm but apparently the attitude that came with the demand that ‘Legs have a red phone to Putin installed in his office and be referred to as “The Talent” in front of the Limited Partners was rubbing people the wrong way.
And now you’re all going to potentially benefit! P.Legs struck out on his own with PSQR Management, which returned 80 percent through July and will be marketed to outsiders (for now it’s all his money) in 2010. Presumably he’ll be looking to hire a few more man boys to help run the the place sometime soon. Let’s try Pellegs on for size. If you like what you see, if it’s all you ever wanted (superficially) in a boss, considering shooting a res.
