A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that holds liquid assets and that makes use of complex trading and risk management techniques to improve investment performance and insulate returns from market risk. Among these portfolio techniques are short selling and the use of leverage and derivative instruments. In the United States, financial regulations require that hedge funds be marketed only to institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market manipulation.
The 2003 mutual fund scandal was the result of the discovery of illegal late trading and market timing practices on the part of certain hedge fund and mutual fund companies.
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many international financial centers. Goldman Sachs is the second-largest investment bank in the world by revenue and is ranked 55th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. In the Forbes Global 2000 of 2024, Goldman Sachs ranked 23rd. It is considered a systemically important financial institution by the Financial Stability Board.
Fidelity Investments, formerly known as Fidelity Management & Research (FMR), is an American multinational financial services corporation based in Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1946, the company is one of the largest asset managers in the world, with $5.8 trillion in assets under management, and $15.0 trillion in assets under administration, as of September 2024, Fidelity Investments operates a brokerage firm, manages a large family of mutual funds, provides fund distribution and investment advice, retirement services, index funds, wealth management, securities execution and clearance, asset custody, and life insurance.
TD Cowen, is an American multinational investment bank and financial services division of TD Securities that operates through two business segments: a broker-dealer and an investment management division.
Private equity in the 1990s relates to one of the major periods in the history of private equity and venture capital. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital, experienced growth along parallel although interrelated tracks.
Publicly traded private equity refers to an investment firm or investment vehicle, which makes investments conforming to one of the various private equity strategies, and is listed on a public stock exchange.
Man GLG is a discretionary investment manager and a wholly owned subsidiary of British alternative investment manager Man Group plc. It is a diversified and multi-strategy fund manager that operates strategies including equity long-short funds, convertible arbitrage funds, emerging market funds and long-only mutual funds. The firm is also a founding member of the Hedge Fund Standards Board and a signatory of the Principles for Responsible investment. As of 2022, Man GLG had $35.4 billion assets under management.
Arthur Jay Samberg was an American businessman and philanthropist. He founded Pequot Capital Management and served as the chief executive officer, president and chairman of the company. Samberg's flagship Pequot fund, started in 1986, netted 17.8 percent over the life of the fund. After the fund closed, he managed his family office through Hawkes Financial. He was also a significant contributor to several hospitals and universities, including New York-Presbyterian Hospital and his alma maters Columbia Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Nasdaq Private Market (NPM) provides a secondary market trading venue for issuers, brokers, shareholders, and prospective investors of private company stock. Since inception, NPM has facilitated more than $40 billion in transactional volume and has worked with 400+ private companies and 100,000+ employees, stakeholders, and investors. NPM offers private company and investors different solutions including tender offers, auctions, block trades, and custom company marketplaces. In 2021, NPM spun-off of Nasdaq to become its own, independent company receiving strategic investments from Silicon Valley Bank, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Allen and Co.
FirstMark is a venture capital firm based in New York City. FirstMark invests in early-stage technology companies, frequently as the first institutional investor and leading the rounds it participates in. Notable investments include Pinterest, Shopify, DraftKings, Stubhub, Airbnb, Upwork, Riot Games, and Frame.io.
Gary J. Aguirre is an American lawyer, former investigator with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and whistleblower.
Winton Group, Ltd is a British investment management firm founded by David Harding. In the United States, Winton is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment advisor and with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a CTA, and is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK. The company trades on more than 100 global futures markets in a wide variety of asset classes and on global equity markets. The firm was launched with $1.6 million in 1997, reached a peak of $28.5 billion in assets under advisement, before dropping to $7.3 billion by late 2020. Winton Group has six offices around the world: London, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, and Abu Dhabi.
BlueCrest Capital Management is a British-American investment firm which was founded by British billionaire Michael Platt and American William Reeves in 2000. The firm has office locations in London, Jersey, Singapore and New York.
SAC Capital Advisors was a group of hedge funds founded by Steven A. Cohen in 1992. The firm employed approximately 800 people in 2010 across its offices located in Stamford, Connecticut and New York City, and various offices. It reportedly lost many of its traders in the wake of various investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 2010, the SEC opened an insider trading investigation of SAC and in 2013 several former employees were indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice. In November 2013, the firm itself pleaded guilty to insider trading charges and paid $1.2 billion in penalties. The firm shrank after returning the vast majority of its outside investor capital. Point72 Asset Management was established as a separate family office in 2014. SAC ceased to exist as a separate entity in 2016. Point 72, essentially the continuation of SAC, manages 30 Billion as of 2023.
FrontPoint Partners was a hedge fund that became well known for its bet against subprime mortgages during the 2008 financial crisis under Steve Eisman. It was based in Greenwich, Connecticut, with other offices in New York and London.
Joseph F. "Chip" Skowron III is an American former hedge fund co-portfolio manager of FrontPoint Partners LLC's health care funds. He was convicted of insider trading, for which he served five years in prison. He was also required to repay his hedge fund employer $32 million it had paid him in compensation, because he had been a “faithless servant.”
Visium Asset Management LP was an American multi-strategy hedge fund and private equity firm. It began as a healthcare-focused fund, founded in 2005 by Jacob Gottlieb. In 2016, three of the company's traders were indicted by United States federal authorities for securities fraud. One of the accused employees killed himself days after he was indicted. Visium subsequently liquidated several of its funds and wound down operations.
