Moore Capital Hires Amaranth Team for New Canadian Office

Date: Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Author: Katherine Burton, Bloomberg.com

(Bloomberg) -- Hedge fund Moore Capital Management said it will open an office in Canada with a new team of traders hired from Amaranth Advisors, the Greenwich, Connecticut firm that lost $6.6 billion last month on natural-gas trades.

Manos Vourkoutiotis, 37, managed Amaranth's Canadian debt, equity and derivatives portfolios for the last six years. He and his team of former Amaranth employees will be opening Moore Canada in Toronto, where they will trade a range of securities, including equities, convertible bonds and high-yield debt.

``We are delighted to have Manos and his team join us and are looking forward to working with them to establish a significant, rewarding and long-term presence in Canada,'' Elaine Crocker, president of New York-based Moore Capital, said in a statement today.

Vourkoutiotis is one of the first senior executives to be hired after Amaranth's collapse last month, which came after natural-gas trader Brian Hunter lost 70 percent of the firm's money in less than two weeks. Amaranth is in the process of selling its remaining assets and returning money to investors. The firm started firing employees on Oct. 13 and plans to shut down by the end of March.

Vourkoutiotis will join Moore once he is finished closing the portfolio he managed at Amaranth, the statement said.

Moore Capital, run by Louis Bacon, manages about $10 billion in assets. Moore is a so-called macro fund, which chases macroeconomic trends by investing in stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities.

To contact the reporter on this story: Katherine Burton in New York at kburton@bloomberg.net