Bruce Kovner Caxton
Bruce Kovner Hopes for Smooth Transition to Andrew Law
A recent trend in the hedge fund industry is high-profile hedge fund managers stepping down and handing off control to a successor. However, in the case of managers Stanley Druckenmiller and Julian Robertson, the transition has been less than smooth and led to the funds returning investor money. Now, Bruce Kovner is stepping down and hoping that his fund Caxton Associates LP will retain investor money despite Andrew Law taking the helm.
Kovner yesterday named chief investment officer Andrew Law, 45, to run his $10 billion Caxton Associates LP. Kovner, 66, who started the New York-based firm in 1983, told clients in a letter that he will retire by the end of the year to pursue personal interests. Peter D’Angelo, 64, the firm’s president and co-founder, will also step aside.
Caxton is confronting a difficult challenge for a growing number of hedge funds: managing succession in a business where success is built on the founders’ trading skill and reputation. Unlike private-equity firms such as Blackstone Group LP, which transformed themselves from private investment partnerships into public, diversified asset managers, top hedge funds from Robertson’s Tiger Management LLC to Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Capital Management LLC returned investor money after the founders stepped back.
“Hedge funds haven’t done a great job at succession planning,” said Myron Kaplan, a partner at New York law firm Kleinberg, Kaplan, Wolff & Cohen PC who advises hedge funds. “The key is to institutionalize the firm and change investors’ perceptions of the fund as a single guru’s shop.” Source
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