Sausage party rolls on for Cohen & Fieri
Multibillionaire Steve Cohen has a taste for high art— and lowly street food.
In between appearances at fancy art openings and Robin Hood galas, the former hedge fund honcho flew out to Los Angeles recently for a brief appearance on his bromance partner Guy Fieri’s Food Network show.
In a video of the event, Cohen is seen chomping down on a Yucatán sausage, solemnly declaring that “it’s like something I never had before.”
The 58yearold befriended Fieri after paying him $ 100,000 to drive around Connecticut to reenact a fantasy episode of “Diners, DriveIns and Dives,” according to Allen Salkin in his book, “From Scratch: Inside the Food Network.”
The chef’s show even featured Cohen’s favorite hotdog spot, the Super Duper Weenie in Fairfield, Conn., according to Salkin. The video was first posted on Dealbreaker.
The überwealthy Cohen, who runs a family office — Point72 Asset Management— was the ultimate target of US Attorney Preet Bharara’s massive insider trading probe.
Although Cohen was never charged, several of his employees were convicted, and his hedge fund, SAC Capital, pleaded guilty to several counts of securities fraud and paid a record $ 1.8 billion fine to the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges.
Now two former SAC employees, Mathew Martoma and Michael Steinberg, are appealing their convictions based on a December appeals court decision that narrowed the definition of insider trading.
An SEC civil charge against Cohen, which could bar him from returning to the hedge fund business, may be ruled on at the end of August.