Help Wanted: Hedge Fund Managers

Date: Thursday, May 15, 2008
Author: David Gaffen, Wall Street Journal

Greg Zuckerman has this report on an outfit that recruits and raises capital for fledgling hedge-fund managers.

Money these days is flowing to the largest managers in the hedge-fund world, while the rest scrape to get by, often ignored by big institutional investors. That could be an opportunity for those trying to scoop up overlooked hedge fund talent.

SkyBridge Capital, a New York firm that that provides capital to new and early-stage hedge funds, is ramping up efforts to recruit new managers. SkyBridge, run by industry veterans Anthony Scaramucci and Scott Prince, has placed more than $300 million with seven hedge-fund managers so far, and has helped them raise a combined $1.3 billion. In exchange, SkyBridge owns about 20% of the managers’ businesses.

Now, SkyBridge is pushing its efforts abroad, signing an agreement with Challenger Financial Services Group Limited, a big Australian financial services company, to find star managers around the globe, seed them with money and help them launch funds of their own. More than half of the new managers are expected to come from outside the U.S., Mr. Scaramucci says.

“We’re trying to identify the next generation of stars and the U.S. is a more mature market,” Mr. Scaramucci says.