| Andrew Mullhaupt |
The former co-head of SAC Capital Advisors’ systematic Meridien Fund, Andrew Mullhaupt, and banking veterans Paul Cargiulo and Charles Steele are launching Meadowood Capital in the first quarter, according to people familiar with their plans. The firm hopes to start with between $75 million and $150 million from the three partners, friends and family, and family offices. But the Meadowood executives, who declined to comment, are also in discussions with seeders about a potential deal.
Meadowood will initially work out of offices in Manhattan. Mullhaupt, the head of research, has been teaching quantitative finance in Stony Brook University’s department of applied mathematics and statistics. Until 2008, he was director of research and one of two portfolio managers at SAC’s Meridien Fund. During his 15-year tenure, the fund never lost money in a calendar year and produced a net annualized return of about 24 percent, according to a person familiar with the fund’s performance. Mullhaupt also worked as a senior research analyst at Renaissance Technologies, where in the early 1990s he built models for the firm’s flagship Medallion Fund with fellow Stony Brook professor Robert Frey.
Cargiulo, the CEO and portfolio manager, was head of Marex Financial’s U.S. division, formerly Refco Overseas. He previously worked at MF Global, running a trading desk for hedge funds. Steele, who will likely serve as COO, comes from Arbor Research & Trading, an institutional research and brokerage firm in Chicago.
Meadowood, named after a Napa Valley resort, will employ three strategies: one focusing on exchange-traded funds, one focusing on high-frequency trading of liquid instruments, and one that will exploit responses to macroeconomic events, according to firm documents.