Louis Bacon |
Louis Bacon’s $15 billion Moore Capital Management has boosted its equity presence with the hire of Level Global Investors veteran William McLanahan as a portfolio manager and a four-person team to support him. The group will focus on the firm’s long/short equity strategy. The hires are consistent with macro-oriented Moore’s growing equity focus during the past few years. In 2008, Moore hired London-based European equity trader Paul Findley to run a stock fund, PF Moore. (Findley left the firm earlier this year to launch $500 million Bramshott Capital with Moore funding.)
In 2009, the firm launched the Moore Emerging Equity Long/Short Fund, which gained 18.21% that year, 32.17% in 2010 and is down 2.07% this year through July, according to the AR database. And in 2010, Moore hired Matt Carpenter and Matt Newton from Citigroup’s proprietary trading equity group. Carpenter is now Moore’s head of equity trading.
Equity risk-taking has increased with the growth of the firm’s equity team. At the end of the second quarter, Bacon raised his U.S. equity exposure to $3.3 billion, up from $2.1 billion in June 2010.
That’s still down from $5.7 billion at the end of the first quarter this year and $4.5 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2010, according to regulatory filings.
McLanahan’s previous employer, Level Global, run by David Ganek, shut down in February after being raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of an insider trading probe, although the firm was never charged with wrongdoing. Moore declined to comment.
