Dan Och May Have Sold His Soul To The Devil

Something’s got to account for Och-Ziff’s escape from its downward spiral.

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By all rights, we should be writing obituaries for the terminally declining Och-Ziff Capital Management. If the dismal performance wasn’t going to kill it, surely the African bribery scandal and subsequent swingeing redemptions would do the trick. But no: Och-Ziff soldiers on. In fact, it does quite a bit better than soldiering on.

Its flagship fund was up nearly 9 per cent in July, while its Asia Master Fund returned around 18 per cent and its Europe Master Fund was up about 5 per cent.

Possibly as a result, people have stopped pulling all the money they can from the firm, just as founder Dan Och predicted.

The hedge fund also saw a small net increase in the amount of money it manages over the month of July, with a bump of around $.2bn, to $32bn, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission….
The company, which is one of the few publicly-traded hedge funds, reported net income of $5.9m for the first half of the year, compared to a loss of $147.9m in the same period last year.

All of which, of course, begs the question: Who’s Dan Och bribing? Is it Beelzebub himself? A soul for a few thousand basis points per year?

Och-Ziff Capital rebounds after tough 2016 [FT]