John Paulson, who personally made $3.7 billion in 2007 in the run-up to the global financial crisis, has laid off several key people at his once gilded, now shriveling hedge fund firm. According to the New York Post, his firm, Paulson & Company, let go of trading head Keith Hannan, head credit trader Brad Rosenberg, and partners Victor Flores and Allen Puwalski.
“We are right-sizing the firm to focus on our core expertise on areas that are growing,” a firm spokesman told the Post. Paulson manages $9 billion, 70 percent of which is his own, according to the report. This is down from a high of $38 billion. The firm has suffered sharp losses in many of its key funds for the past few years. This year the Schroeder GAIA Paulson Merger Arbitrage Class C fund was down about 7.60 percent through February and 5.80 percent through March 13, according to an HSBC document that tracks hedge fund performance. The fund, a UCITs product (a type of European mutual fund), has never made money since its 2014 inception. The fund’s performance is generally in line with that of Paulson Partners, Paulson’s oldest fund, which specializes in merger arbitrage.
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Perceptive Advisors participated in the recent $94 million Series B financing of IDEAYA Biosciences, an oncology-focused biotechnology company. This is the hedge fund firm’s first investment in the company.
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Glen Kacher’s Light Street Capital Management boosted stake in specialty e-commerce company Stitch Fix to more than 1.2 million shares, or 7.1 percent of the total. The Tiger cub initially invested in the company in the fourth quarter.
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Boothbay Fund Management disclosed it owns 6.4 percent of Opes Acquisition Corp., which on Friday closed on an initial offering of $100 million worth of shares. Opes is a newly formed blank check company created to do some sort of deal in Mexico.
