The 2004 launch of multistrategy hedge fund firm Eton Park Capital Management, founded by Goldman Sachs alumni Eric Mindich and Edward Misrahi, was one of the most significant hedge fund launches in history, with $3.5 billion in seed money largely from former Goldman colleagues. Investors were attracted by Mindich’s impeccable pedigree: The wunderkind was named Goldman Sachs’s youngest-ever partner at age 27 in 1994 and went on to serve as equity arbitrage chief as a member of the fabled risk arbitrage desk headed by former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin (along with Perry Capital’s Richard Perry and Farallon Capital founder Thomas Steyer). Mindich’s background was so alluring to potential investors that they were willing to overlook an onerous rolling three-year lockup in his fund…
