One year ago
»» Kingdon Capital Management added an Asian portfolio manager and new head of trading, despite a drop in assets to $4.6 billion and negative performance at the time.
It has not been a pretty year for the firm. Its flagship global equity Kingdon Associates fund lost 17.63% in 2011 and assets are down to $2.5 billion. The fund is up 6.4% through midyear 2012. Manish Mittal, one of two cyclical portfolio managers, departed at the end of June after two years, leaving firm co-chief investment officer Richard Rieger with responsibilities for industrials.
Last year’s letter also noted that the firm’s macro portfolio management Kathleen Kelley was “moving with her family to London.” Kelly is headed back to New York now for a targeted Sept. 1 launch of her new macro fund, Queen Anne’s Gate Capital Management. At last week’s Delivering Alpha conference, she recommended shorting the British pound sterling and going long the U.S. dollar.
Patrick Clifford, an external spokesman for Kingdon, did not respond to a request for comment.
See also: Kingdon taps SAC portfolio manager, Indus CCO • Kingdon IR chief let go, alleges breach of contract
Five years ago
»» The AR Composite Index rose 0.60% in June 2007, capping 12 consecutive months of gains and prompting Absolute Return to proclaim that the broader hedge fund market was “weathering the storm well, at least so far.”
Our Doppler radar could only see so far ahead. Hedge funds continued to profit for another year, before slamming into a tempest in the second half of 2008, a year that saw the benchmark index turn in its first negative performance ever and the industry shed staff.
»» FrontPoint Partners said in a conference call with investors that the subprime mortgage market’s freefall was a “sheer calamity” unfolding on the broader credit markets. “I think what is happening is that we are getting a complete repricing of risk throughout the fixed income markets,” said Steve Eisman, portfolio manager of FrontPoint Financial Services Fund.
Eisman’s call proved correct, but he could not predict the sheer calamity (for lack of a better term) that would bring down Greenwich, Conn.-based FrontPoint (see AR’s extensive cover story on the firm, “The Fall of FrontPoint”). Eisman left the firm last summer and now has his own new hedge fund, Emrys Partners, which began trading in March with about $23 million, according to filings. The firm managed $53.9 million as of July 1, according to a person familiar with the firm.
A secretary at Emrys said the firm would not respond to media inquiries.
See also: FrontPoint subprime star Steve Eisman’s prime sale
