Simons retires as RenTech boss
Legendary investor James Simons has stepped down as chairman of his secretive hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies.
The 82-year-old Simons — a former math professor who became one of the most successful investors in history by pioneering computer-based stock trading — notified investors in December that he would be passing the torch to RenTech’s chief executive, Peter Brown, on Jan. 1.
Simons has not been in charge of the day-to-day operations of the $116 billion fund for nearly a decade, but his continued role as chairman had maintained his profile at the company he founded in 1982.
Simons, who has a Ph.D. in math and was a codebreaker during the Cold War, will remain on the board, a company spokesman confirmed.
RenTech pioneered the quantitative trading strategy that has become a cornerstone of the hedge-fund industry and made Simons a very wealthy man. Forbes estimates his net worth at $23.5 billion, and he has consistently been one of the highest-earning hedgies in the world.
In 2018, The Post reported that Simons’ annual compensation worked out to a tidy $194,000 per hour. That number might have been impacted a bit a year later, when the feds went after RenTech for failing to pay $6.8 billion in taxes out of the Medallion fund over a 15-year period.
That same fund famously returned 98 percent in 2008 as the financial crisis crushed markets. It returned 76 percent in 2020 as the COVID pandemic ravaged the global economy.
While notoriously press-shy, Simons has dropped the veil a few times over the years. In 2017, he told a business-breakfast gathering that he was no fan of President Trump.
“I think it’s basically terrible that we have a president remotely like our current president,” Simons said. “We’ve had some doozies but never of that caliber.”
That take on Trump put him at odds with his mentee and former RenTech coCEO Robert Mercer. Mercer was revealed as Trump’s biggest financial backer in the 2016 campaign and played a key role putting Steve Bannon into Trump’s orbit.
Mercer resigned as co-CEO of RenTech just weeks after Simons’ 2017 salvo against Trump.