Hedge Fund - Cantillon Capital Management

William von Mueffling is the president and CEO of Cantillon Capital Management. After graduating from Columbia with an MBA in 1995, he went to work for Deutsche Bank in Germany and France, and later Lazard Asset Management, where he ultimately became a managing director responsible for hedge funds. At Lazard, he was a rock star. He averaged annual returns of over 30% from 1998 to 2003, made largely by shorting technology stocks. William von Mueffling went on to found Cantillon Capital in 2003.

When William von Mueffling started Cantillon, he was using a traditional long/short strategy, which he later changed to a long only strategy in 2005. William von Mueffling managed to outperform many other hedge funds but his returns were still low on an absolute return basis. They were down 7-8% through May of 2009. By June, William von Mueffling had decided to return investors' money from the Cantillon World and Cantillon Europe hedge funds.

William von Mueffling said, "our strategy has run its course," explaining, "we have found ourselves covering a large number of shorts in the Cantillon World and Cantillon Europe hedge funds (the "Funds"). This is likely to continue and therefore the Funds' portfolios in the future are not likely to exhibit the characteristics that we have always targeted for the Funds. Secondly, we want to focus on our long-only strategy which we launched in 2005. Today, the stocks that we own in this strategy have the best characteristics that we have seen in a decade." William von Mueffling left the option for his investors to transfer their investments into his Global Equity funds.