A change in management at Tribeca Global Management is also leading to a new approach to the way the Citigroup Alternative Investments unit does business. With the appointment of Dean Barr to replace Tanya Styblo Beder as CEO, Financial News reports, Tribeca is revising how it makes allocation decisions. Until now, an investment committee was supposed to make the decisions, after consulting with traders and managers. But, according to FN, few of them ever joined the discussions, which has led some to wonder how effective allocation by committee is. Now, Oliver Dobbs, Tribeca’s global head of equities, will make those decisions as chief investment officer. His resume certainly sounds as if he’s quite up to the task; before joining Tribeca, Dobbs was a proprietary trader at Goldman Sachs, where he specialized in convertible trading as well as tax and volatility arbitrage. Market watchers are saying it makes sense for one person to make those allocation decisions, and Tribeca is counting on Dobbs to lift the fund well above its 1% growth rate this year, and to shed the stigma of having negative returns for it multi-strategy approach, which supposedly is designed to avoid losing money. The strategy in general, says FN, has still not grabbed institutional investors, which favor funds of hedge fund. Tribeca is also looking help expand the firm as originally projected in 2004 to $10 billion in assets and double the strategies to 50. After receiving $1.5 billion in seed capital from Citi, Tribeca has raised only $500 million so far this year.
