Doubloon Capital, the new hedge fund firm launched this year by Pirate Capital founder Thomas Hudson, is looking to add to its crew.
The event-driven firm, which will target distressed companies, is actively seeking to add “an aggressive analyst” to its team, according to a job ad drafted by the firm. A Doubloon staffer declined to comment on anything regarding either the new firm or Pirate.
Hudson established Pirate and its flagship Jolly Roger Fund in 2002. The manager’s aggressive activist stance brought the firm swift notoriety—Hudson referred to losing stocks as “shipwrecks” and his motto was “Surrender The Booty!”
The firm drew attention when it managed to grow assets under management to $1.5 billion at the beginning of 2006 from $225 million just 12 months earlier. Also in early 2006, the firm launched its second offering, the Jolly Roger Activist Fund. Pirate’s assets peaked at $1.9 billion in the summer of 2006, but it started losing money soon after.
These losses were followed by staff defections and a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission into whether Pirate had failed to properly disclose certain stock sales, all of which led to big redemptions. By the summer of 2007, the firm was managing about $400 million.
A longstanding investor would still have made money, though: Pirate returned over 99% from January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2009.
Hudson is clearly sticking with the pirate theme: Not only is Doubloon named after a Spanish coin associated with buried treasure, the firm’s logo is a galleon at sea, and its sparse one-page Web site features an old seafaring map as a backdrop.
—Robert Murray
