| Scaramucci at the 2011 SALT conference Photo: Bloomberg |
SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci, whose flashy presence has made him a polarizing industry fixture, has some candid words for hedge fund newbies.
“Here’s my blunt advice to anyone thinking of starting a fund—don’t do it!” he writes in “The Little Book of Hedge Funds,” to be released in May.
The work, part of a series of financial books aimed at a general audience, offers an uncharacteristically casual look at hedge funds from a man who Bloomberg News once said “catapulted himself into the center of the hedge-fund world through unabashed self-promotion.” That same article described him fist pumping his way through a Bellagio pool party, the Las Vegas casino where he hosts the annual SALT (Skybridge Alternatives) conference that connects some of the country’s most reclusive hedge fund managers with deep-pocketed investors.
There are only hints of his famous flamboyance in the short book, an advance copy of which was provided to AR. “Boy, that was a mouthful!,” he writes after a cursory explanation of how funds of funds are structured. At another point, he opens a chapter with a bewildering quote: “The obvious isn’t obvious until it’s obvious,” which he attributes to himself, while acknowledging it sounds like it “should have come from Yogi Berra.”
Despite his early warning to potential new hedge fund managers, Scaramucci keeps his cheerleading reputation—and that of $6 billion fund-of-funds and seeding firm SkyBridge—intact.
“The bottom line is this: Hedge funds add value in a multitude of ways,” he writes at the end of the book. “As smart, passionate, hungry, articulate, and highly motivated people continue to flock to this industry, it will continue to grow at a surprising rate.”
