Ken Griffin Leaves Stamp on Chicago With a $130 Million Giving Spree (Bloomberg)
It’s hard to escape Ken Griffin’s name if you live in Chicago. The Citadel founder, who for years was Illinois’s richest man, has given more than $600 million to organizations in the Windy City since arriving in 1989. His name adorns a hall at the Art Institute of Chicago. The entire Museum of Science & Industry plans to take on the billionaire hedge fund manager’s name in 2024. Some of his extensive art collection is on display at the University of Chicago, also home of the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics.
This Quant Manager Offers a Rarity: An ESG Fund That’s Up This Year (Institutional Investor)
Welton Investment Partners’ ESG multi-asset fund — designed to provide investors with equity-like returns during up markets and downside protection during declines — got its first test in 2022. Most ESG offerings, which are still generally long-only equity strategies, suffered heavy losses this year. In contrast, Welton’s fund returned 8.04 percent through May, according to sources familiar with the performance. The fund, called ESG Advantage, is only a couple of years old, but it’s based on Welton’s two-decade-old, multi-strategy hedging process.
Bill Ackman Gives $18K to Toddler Orphaned in Highland Park Shooting (New York Post)
Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman gave $18,000 to a GoFundMe for two-year-old Aiden McCarthy, whose parents were killed at the July 4th Highland Park, Illinois parade, according to the donation website. Ackman is Jewish and the number 18 symbolizes life and good luck in Judaism. McCarthy’s mother was a Jewish emigre and Highland Park is a largely Jewish community outside of Chicago.
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Hedge Fund Managers Are Confident About The Next Year Despite The Many Headwinds (Forbes)
Despite the weak performance numbers we’re seeing from sources like Eurekahedge and Citco, hedge fund managers generally report being confident about their funds’ economic prospects over the next 12 months. Soaring inflation and the geopolitical turmoil hovering over Europe right now aren’t taking a bite out of hedge fund confidence either. For May, Eurekahedge reported a decline of -.57% on an equal-weighted basis and a decline of 0.32% on an asset-weighted basis for reporting hedge funds. It was the second straight month of declining performance for hedge funds, driven by aggressive interest rate hikes that stoked fears about a recession. Meanwhile, hedge funds administered by Citco returned -1.1% for May.
High Inflation will Last for Years Amid Global Turmoil, Hedge Funder Famous from ‘The Big Short’ Says (Fortune)
Michael Burry, the prolific tweeter and hedge fund manager whose prescient bet against the housing market before the 2008 financial crisis was featured in The Big Short, said Tuesday that he thinks inflation could persist for years. The 51-year-old founder of Scion Asset Management pointed to the restructuring of the global supply chain as the driving force behind higher prices, delivering his warning in an awkwardly phrased tweet.
