Morning Brief: Ex-Millennium Pro Gelband Reportedly Raises $8 Billion

Michael Gelband has raised about $8 billion for his new hedge fund firm, ExodusPoint, in what is deemed to be the biggest hedge fund debut ever, according to the Financial Times. This is especially staggering in an environment that has otherwise become very difficult for even name-brand managers to gather assets.

Gelband is the former Millennium Management fixed income trader who left the multi-strategy firm at the beginning of 2017 after he reportedly was disappointed he would not be succeeding the firm’s legendary founder Izzy Englander anytime soon. According to the report, the new firm, which was co-founded Hyung Soon Lee, a former Millennium head of equities, will initially have 30 investment teams trading stocks and bonds.

The firm has hired many people already from Millennium and Man Group, according to the FT. Gelband spent 24 years at Lehman Brothers, where he was global head of fixed income when the investment bank collapsed amid the 2008 financial crisis.

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Tiger Global Management led the $60 million Series C round of financing for SafetyCulture, an Australian company best known for its health and safety mobile app iAuditor, according to published reports. The company is now valued at $440 million, according to the report.

“Tiger has a track record for investing in great companies and then following on and continuing to buy more of the company, while supporting its growth, so I was very keen to have them involved,” SafetyCulture founder Luke Anear told the Australian Financial Review. He also said Tiger Global partner Lee Fixel was highly recommended by other start-up founders. “Other founders had told me that Lee moves very quick, offers very reasonable prices, and he sticks to his word and this round took about half the time it took us to do our $30 million round back in 2016,” Anear stated in the report. “I met with him for 90 minutes and he knew all of the background on us and said he would have an offer to us within 24 hours, which he did.”

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D.E. Shaw boosted its stake in Yelp to 4.25 million shares, or 5.1 percent of the restaurant app.

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Caxton Corp. said it cut its stake in Agile Therapeutics by about 63 percent, to about 672,000 shares, or 2 percent of the women's healthcare company.