Paul Allen apparently has a lot of confidence in Mike McCaffrey‘s sizzling ability to bring home the bacon. Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft and owner of football’s Super Bowl loser, the Seattle Seahawks, hopes he’s picked a winner of an investment by punting a cool $1 billion into McCaffrey’s new investment firm that reportedly will tackle a multi-strategy fund of hedge funds, among other things. That billion-dollar investment represents a little less than 5% of Allen’s reported fortune of $22.5 billion, and has prompted Seattle blogger John Cook to wonder why Allen didn’t forward that kind of cash to the investment firm he formed 20 years ago, Vulcan Inc. Vulcan declined to comment, but Cook serves up this explanation to Hedge Fund Alert: Vulcan has been looking for at least eight months for a money manager to oversee a pool of billions of dollars. So perhaps there is no one at home with McCafrrey’s pedigree. He was chief investment office of the $14.3 billion endowment system at Stanford University, and when he left in December, Stanford Management Co. chief investment officer Michael Ross and private equity managing director David Burke touched down with him at his new firm. Last year SMC enjoyed returns of 19.5%, with a 15.4% annual average over the past decade. Apparently, Allen wants to go with a winner at least once this month.
