Posted on 09/28/2010 4:58:16 PM PDT by WebFocus
DE Shaw, one of the world’s biggest and most successful hedge fund managers, is to cut up to 10 per cent of its workforce.
Significant job cuts have been announced in New York and London, people familiar with the firm told the Financial Times, with further redundancies across the firm’s global operation.
The move comes amidst one of the hedge fund industry’s most disappointing years on record and reflects the degree to which even the largest managers have struggled to maintain their profitability.
According to Hedge Fund Research, the average hedge fund has returned just 1.45 per cent so far this year.
The cuts at DE Shaw, some of the deepest in the firm’s history, follow a strategic review undertaken by management as a result of large investor outflows this year.
DE Shaw has suffered an estimated $7bn in redemptions over the past few months, according to investors.
As of September 1, the firm managed about $21bn across its range of funds.
A spokesperson for DE Shaw declined to comment.
The firm was one of several big-name managers that “gated” investors during the financial crisis where client withdrawals from funds were automatically restricted in an effort to preserve portfolio values and avoid asset firesales.
Not all investors welcomed the controversial practice, even though in some cases it protected value.
As the gates were progressively lifted this year, the firm saw large amounts of money being withdrawn all at once.
DE Shaw, founded by the mathematician David Shaw in 1988, is known as one of the hedge fund industry’s most successful, if publicity-shy, fund managers. Mr Shaw no longer runs the firm on a day-to-day basis and is now a leading figure in computational biochemical research.
The greater part of DE Shaw’s investments are made using complicated mathematical models that aim to spot hidden market trends or pricing anomalies, although the fund manager has recently expanded into private equity and bottom-up value-driven investing.
In total, the firm currently employs around 1,500 people globally, making it the second- largest hedge fund by the number employees in the world, after the UK’s Man Group.
They only hire the best and brightest and some of their hiring ads usually have qualifiers like -- Only Graduates of Ivy League Schools need apply.
My marine construction company just laid off 40%. No upcoming projects.
This is great news, the socialists on Wall Street gave money to and voted for the fascists, now let them suffer.
Too bad they didn’t axe more of the parasites and make ‘em go out and do something useful for a living.
By what standard did you find their compensation extravagant?
By what standard did you find their compensation extravagant?
Firstly, how do you know that hedge funds are left-leaning or even socialist? It is known that major investment banks, particularly Goldman, are such. This has never been alleged with respect to hedge funds.
Secondly, they do not suffer from fascism: the same losses are incurred during any downturn of a purely capitalist economy.
Your schadenfreude is completely unfounded.
RE: By what standard did you find their compensation extravagant?
OK, relatively extravagant compared to performance.
If basketball player A is paid $15 Million per season and basketball player B is paid $8 Million per season and their stats and contribution to their team as well as their team’s performance are the same, I’d say player A is extravagantly paid.
“DE Shaw has suffered an estimated $7bn in redemptions over the past few months, according to investors.”
Holy s**t! His returns lately must suck. Paulson is down too. The last few months have been fairly flat.
David Shaw is a p**ck. Didn’t he clean up with the other Obama shorts (John Paulson, Flowers, Soros, Steven Cohen) wiping out the financial stocks and financial markets in bear raids while McCain, Bush & Chris Cox were flat footed and Hank Paulson knew what was going on but did nothing? This is how Hussein got elected with that bear raid.
This comes from Willie Green, a unionist plant on FR who uses his forum for socialist propaganda.
Hedge funds have standard compensation: 2% administrative and 20% of profits. They don't get paid at all even when a year if profitable until they make up for past losses.
Those that make investors more wealthy are paid proportionally more.
I see no basis for your assertion.
LOL! Well Willie is probably a frustrated Amtrak employee but Mr. David Shaw aka computer scientist mainly had lots of really faster computers next to the exchanges buying and selling 24x7 around the world. They pretty much tried to pick up nickels, pennys and dimes based on their models.
SHaw was probably one of the shorts helping Soros in the late summer of 2008 getting Obama elected.
Like Roosevelt and Nazis, you blame the downturn on the "bankers" and "financiers."
Did Bush get elected on the burst of the dot-com bubble? Of course not.
Bubbles burst. That's all. Short-sellers are sometimes right, and sometimes the longs do well. No need for a conspiracy theory here.
It would be nice if you kept the gutter language where it belongs --- in the gutter.
No no no. Go further back for the set up. CRA lawsuits, community organizers, 2006 Dem Congress Cong Black Caucus forcing banks to give out loans to everyone, the Sandlers who owned World Savings with their pick-a-pay mortgages, Stan O’Neil push Merrill pedal to the medal into mortgages, Rahm at Fannie and Gorelnick at Freddie plus Raines at Fannie.
They set it up and went down the list shooting fish in a barrel: Wa Mu, Indy Mac, AIG, Wachovia, Merrill, Lehamn and on and on. Schumer starting the Indy Mac rumor then a year later - Soros, Paulson, Flowers and Mcihael Dell buy Indy Mac.
It was a setup started back with the CRA’sin Chicago and ACORN. You need a cane and seeing eye dog - pal.
RE: I see no basis for your assertion.
Going back to the basketball analogy, if player A is friends with the referee and has a silent understanding (wink wink) with him, then the game is different.
This is an open secret among a lot of my hedge fund friends and is no conspiracy.
Hedge-fund managers like DE Shaw have been tapping another source of information: the corridors of the Capitol.
You might want to ask yourself which hedge fund the recent dearly departed Obama economic adviser Larry Summers is very chummy to. If your answer is DE Shaw, go to the head of the class.
Hedge funds are finding that Washington can be a gold mine of market-moving information, easily gathered by the politically connected. The funds are hiring lobbyists — not to influence government, but to tell them what it’s going to do. Several lobbying firms are ramping up their “political-intelligence” units and charging hedge funds between $5,000 and $20,000 a month for tips and predictions.
It’s not an entirely fair game where they use pure quantitative research to make money my friend.
So yes, the pay is extravagant because they CAN be extravagant.
Am I tarring and feathering every hedge fund out there ? By no means. I don’t know them all. But with the few who I have friends working in, I am not entirely convinced they are playing a fair game.
We don’t live in an entirely free market system... GOVERNMENT and people working in it are heavily involved.
Come to think of it, it might always have been that way.
You have no problem with facts but serious difficulties with causality. E.g.: "ask yourself which hedge fund the recent dearly departed Obama economic adviser Larry Summers is very chummy to." The same is said about Goldman: many people in government are ex-Goldmanites. So what? Goldman hires the best (and is hated for the same reason) and, as is known, civic-minded people. It is no surprise that they end up in government. Others go farther: look how many Jewish names one encounters? There must therefore Jewish conspiracy, they must be acting together. In statistics, this common fallacy is known as spurious correlation: one attributes effect A to B whereas the true cause is C.
I very much liked the ending of your post: "... GOVERNMENT and people working in it are heavily involved. Come to think of it, it might always have been that way." How true. Nobody said that the system is perfect. But when you criticize it at the time when it (capitalism) is on its deathbed, you should be aware of the full consequences of your advocacy.
Long ago I heard a joke that I did not think was that funny at first. It's about a boy who has a bolt in place of a bellybutton. He was teased a lot by other kids. One day, when he was tired of teasing, he got mad and unscrewed the bolt. His ass fell off.
Think about that.
Easily. Go to OpenSecrets.org and start looking at summarized campaign contributions. DE Shaw is one of the hedge funds making the top ten in political contributions year after year after year.
Allow me to summarize:
Cycle: 2010
Contributions to date: $452,349.
Proportion to Democrats: 96%.
To Republicans: 4%.
Since that’s after the Teleprompter In Chief has exhibited his lackluster leadership, we can assume that they’re pretty well in the tank for him. But let’s say that’s not dispositive for you. Let’s go further back.
Cycle 2008
Contributions: $935,235.
Proportion to Democrats: 96%.
To Republicans 4%.
Cycle 2006
Contributions $485,200.
Proportion to Democrats: 93%.
To Republicans: 6%.
Cycle 2004
Contributions: $256,250
Proportion to Democrats: 96%.
To Republicans: 4%
Cycle 2002
Contributions: $769,296
Proportion to Democrats: 100%.
To Republicans: 0%.
Cycle 2000
Contributions: $503,968
Proportion to Democrats: 100%.
To Republicans: 0%.
Cycle 1998
Contributions: $244,000
Proportion to Democrats: 100%.
To Republicans: 0%.
In this election cycle so far, of the top 20 hedge funds, 13 have given the majority of their campaign contributions to Democrats or Democrat front groups. In the 2008 election cycle, 15 out of 20 of the top hedge funds making political donations gave the majority of their contributions to the Democrats.
That should pretty well settle the issue.
It very much does so. Many thanks for the info, Dave. I must admit that it was eye-opening for me: I truly had not known that the bias among the hedge funds is as bad as among the banks. Painful truth.
Whose wealth did they think Obama would redistribute? They support him and now feel offended that he "vilified" them. Idiots, useful idiots.
Stockpirate, as NYDave’s post #17 shows, you were absolutely correct. Dave’s info fully supports your statement.
I was taken aback as well. Something the Hirsch folks (who publish the Almanacs for stocks and commodities) said twigged me to go look at donations from the financial sector after the 2008 election, and I was quite surprised by what I found.
Two lessons I took away from it:
1. Wall Street is NOT “capitalist.” They have no desire to actual engage in real capitalism. What Wall Street practices is “crony capitalism,” as in “hey, Senator, we could use a favor....” to benefit their bank/fund/etc.
2. The perception among conservatives/Republicans that they’re sticking up for people who are like-minded is *dangerously* wrong.
There’s a reason why I’ve been hard on the banks and telling conservatives to quit carrying the water for banks and funds. These people are, in the majority, NOT our friends, much less our allies. Yet, who is getting the bad rap for supporting them? Republicans and conservatives... even as the Democrats hand out far, far larger favors and back-scratching favors to them.
To end this perception, it would behoove the GOP to go on the offensive against Wall Street. I know they won’t, but it really would end some outlandishly incorrect PR about the GOP if they did, and if I were running the GOP, I’d go after the banks and funds with a fury not seen since Andrew Jackson.
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