The 2015 Hedge Fund Rising Stars: Samuel Siegal

Samuel Siegal met Alexander Klabin when both were undergraduates at Princeton University. The two graduated in 1998. Klabin and another Princeton grad, Douglas Silverman, would go on to have careers in hedge funds; in 2008 they co-founded their own New York–based hedge fund firm, Senator Investment Group, which today manages more than $9 billion in assets. Siegal, who majored in economics, also went into finance. By 2008 he was working as a financial analyst in the value investing group for hedge fund firm Caxton Associates. After founder Bruce Kovner retired in 2011, New York–headquartered Caxton put more emphasis on macro than on its equities team. A small group of portfolio managers, including Siegal, left to join SAC Capital Advisors. Siegal, 38, spent almost three years at the Greenwich, Connecticut–based hedge fund firm, sharpening his skills as an investor and starting to focus on the health care sector. In Siegal’s native New Jersey, his mother and father are a judge and an attorney, respectively, and politics was part of his upbringing. He thinks his knowledge of government and public policy gives him an edge in navigating the political side of health care investing. Siegal eventually came to feel that his friends at Senator — he had also gotten to know Silverman — pursued a more bottom-up and event-driven investment approach that better suited him. So in 2012 he left SAC for Senator to help build the health care team as a partner. Three and a half successful years later, it has been one of his best trades yet.