Julien Balkany, a 29-year-old French citizen, chose an inauspicious year, 2008, to launch New York–based Nanes Balkany Partners.

The managing partner and CIO of the activist fund that invests primarily in the oil and gas sector was an analyst in the Latin American debt capital markets group at Bear Stearns in 2002, then spent three years at a private equity firm that specialized in emerging markets.

The experience is paying off for Balkany, who has an MBA in finance from the University of California, Berkeley: His $40 million first fund was up 23 percent, net of fees, in 2008 and 48.2 percent in 2009.

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