Former SAC Executive Raises About $1 Billion For New Hedge-Fund Firm
Solomon Kumin’s Folger Hill Hires Former U.S. Attorney, Cluster Of Traders
Former SAC Capital Advisors LP chief operating officer Solomon “Sol” Kumin is close to lift off with the launch of a roughly $1 billion hedge fund.
Mr. Kumin’s Folger Hill Asset Management LLC has raised about $1 billion as it looks to start trading in March, a person familiar with the firm said. His new employees include Lisa Baroni, a former U.S. Attorney who helped prosecute the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. Ms. Baroni will head compliance for the new firm.
As The Wall Street Journal first reported last summer, Mr. Kumin’s new stock-focused firm secured a $400 million investment from Leucadia National Corp. in exchange for a near-50% ownership stake in the new firm. Folger Hill is named after a lookout point on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, where Mr. Kumin’s family spends vacations.
Having now more than doubled the Leucadia sum with other commitments, Mr. Kumin has opened offices in New York and Boston. He also plans to have between nine and 11 separate portfolio managers trading about $300 million apiece, including the use of borrowed money, or leverage, by the end of the first quarter, the person familiar said.
The structure is similar to his former employer SAC, which doled out parcels of cash to separate trading teams reporting up to founder Steven Cohen. SAC agreed to plead guilty to insider trading in 2013, and refashioned itself as a family office managing only the wealth of Mr. Cohen, his family and select employees.
Mr. Kumin, whose focus at SAC included building investment teams, left the firm early last year.
Mr. Kumin has thus far hired just one former SAC colleague: Brian Younger, an ex-SAC portfolio manager who focuses on technology, media and telecommunications stocks. Other new Folger Hill portfolio managers hail from multibillion-dollar hedge-fund firms like PAR Capital Management Inc., Pennant Capital Management LLC and PointState Capital LP.