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The 2016 Hedge Fund Rising Stars: Dennis ChenFu
Pershing Prime Services is counting on prime brokerage veteran ChenFu to lead its West Coast expansion.
In 2014, Dennis ChenFu moved from Jersey City, New Jersey, where he headed trading sales for Pershing Prime Services, to Los Angeles to spearhead the prime brokerage’s efforts on the West Coast. While many of the bulge-bracket banks have retrenched from the prime brokerage business, Pershing, with the backing of parent Bank of New York Mellon Corp., has seen an opportunity to expand.
ChenFu’s new Pershing territory extends from LA to Seattle. With the hedge fund industry under pressure, the San Francisco Bay Area has been a rare bright spot and hub of activity for new and experienced managers looking for investment opportunities and ideas in Silicon Valley. BNY Mellon launched its fourth innovation center, a research and development facility for new financial services technology, in Palo Alto, California, in 2014.
Born in Chengdu in southwestern China, ChenFu came to the U.S. at age ten, settling with his mother and brother in Tennessee. His mother studied accounting at the University of Tennessee before the family moved north to New Jersey during his freshman year of high school. ChenFu, 45, attended Rutgers University in that state, graduating with a BA in economics in 1994.
His first job out of college was with Pershing in its then-fledgling prime brokerage group, where he helped to bring new hedge fund firms on board. Four years later he joined investment bank Bear Stearns Cos., which at the time was one of the most highly regarded providers of prime services, as associate director of prime brokerage business consulting. In 2006, ChenFu was recruited by Fidelity Investments, then a newcomer to the field, to lead its New York prime services sales team. He spent the crisis years of 2008–’09 at Bank of America Merrill Lynch helping hedge funds to take their international prime brokerage exposure stateside. Once some of the dust settled and it looked like stability and opportunity was returning to ChenFu’s business, some ex–Bear Stearns colleagues called him back to Pershing in 2010.
Visit the 2016 Hedge Fund Rising Stars: Ivy League Schools Pave the Way for more.
 Jessye Ball Millennium Mgmt  Sarah Berner Aristeia Capital  Jenna Bussman-Wise AIG Investments  Maureen Chang Point72 Asset Mgmt  Dennis Chenfu Pershing |
 Charles Dufresne Jr. Sciens Capital Mgmt  William Freda Graticule Asset Mgmt Asia  Samantha Greenberg Margate Capital  Mark Gurevich Ropes & Gray  Tal Gurion Mariner Glen Oaks |
 Craig Huie University of California  Yusef Kassim Blue Harbour Group  Florian Kronawitter White Square Capital  Vikram Kumar TT International  Brandon Levin Jana Partners |
 Jonathan Levin George Weiss Associates  Brett Minarik Aksia  Ian Monroe Etho Capital  Jason Morrow Utah Retirement Systems  Pierre-Adrien Nicolas Squarepoint Capital |
 Jamie Pabst Green Owl Capital Mgmt  Parag Pande Blackstone Group  Agata Praczuk MetLife  Max Saffian Fortress Investment Group  Matt Satnick MSD Partners |
 Eric Singer Viex Capital Advisors  Katina Stefanova Marto Capital  Reginald Tucker New York State Common Retirement Fund  Michael Wang Cypress Funds  Sean Wygovsky Polar Asset Mgmt Partners |