LOSING HIS HEDGE
Mindich’s $7B Eton Park the latest fund to shutter
Eric Mindich’s crystal ball told him to cut his losses and run.
The 49-year-old investing prodigy — who first gained notoriety at 27 when he was named the youngest partner ever at Goldman Sachs — said Thursday that his $7 billion hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management was closing down.
Mindich said he was returning money to investors after losing 9 percent in 2016. That’s despite the fund posting four consecutive years of gains, including a 22-percent jump in 2013 and returning 6 percent in both 2014 and 2015. Performance this year has been flat. In a letter to investors, Mindich said he was throwing in the towel “from a position of relative strength.”
Mindich blamed “a combination of industry headwinds, a difficult market environment and, importantly, our own disappointing 2016 results.”
Eton Park, founded in 2004, quietly shuttered its London offices last week, according to reports. The Manhattan-based fund also operated a Hong Kong office.
The hedge fund plans to return 40 percent of its capital to investors by the end of next month and added that some of its investments may take longer to unwind.
Eton Park’s fall marks a stunning defeat for a storybook career on Wall Street. Before striking out on his own, Harvard-educated Mindich spent 15 years at Goldman Sachs. He took the helm of the bank’s arbitrage desk at age 25 before being named partner two years later.
Mindich raised $3.5 billion to launch Eton Park in 2004, making it one of the largest hedge fund launches at the time — despite the fact that the fund had an unusually lengthy two-year lockup period.
Still, Mindich isn’t the only Goldman alum to shutter a flashy, multibillion-dollar hedge fund of late. Richard Perry did just that last September.
Representatives for Eton Park did not comment on what Mindich will do next.
Outside of Eton Park, Mindich serves on the board of Lincoln Center Theater. He has been married to his wife Stacey, a Tony Award-winning producer, for 20 years.