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Revision as of 18:49, 29 December 2005

Steven A. Cohen, a billionaire hedge fund investor, is the founder of SAC Capital Partners, a Stamford, Connecticut based hedge fund which he continues to manage. Cohen grew up in Great Neck, New York, and he attended the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Cohen lives in Greenwich, Connecticut with his wife and seven children.

In the past five years, Cohen has become a prominent art collector. Within the last two years, he reportedly bought a Jackson Pollock for $52 million and paid $25 million each for a Warhol and a Picasso, and earlier this year he reportedly paid $8 million for a 14-foot tiger shark submerged in formaldehyde by the British artist Damien Hirst.

SAC Capital Partners

While SAC closely guards its returns, published reports and people who have seen the fund's letters to its investors say that SAC had a gross return, before its fees, of at least 40 percent in every year from 1996 to 2001, making it astoundingly successful. While most hedge funds charge a fee of 20% to 30% percent of the annual profit, SAC keeps 50%.

According to BusinessWeek magazine, the $4 billion dollar hedge fund outfit routinely accounts for as much as 3% of the New York Stock Exchange's average daily trading, plus up to 1% of the NASDAQ's -- a total of at least 20 million shares a day.

Special Privileges Offered To Cohen and SAC Partners

Because SAC Partners has such a favorable relationship with the exchanges, they are allegedly given early information about transactions that take place on the exchanges (see the BusinessWeek article). This is a controversial practice, because it allows the fund to "trade ahead" of the rest of the exchange.

References

BusinessWeek article on Steve Cohen

Please note that the above statements are completely unproven and are merely speculation.

• American money managers