No doubt overwhelmed by the heady perfume of green shoots wafting from the Fed's printing presses.
WSJ
Pallotta, Noble to Close Funds
By JENNY STRASBURG and PETER LATTMAN
Two prominent Boston money managers are winding down their biggest funds, another sign of the relentless shakeout in the hedge fund industry.
James Pallotta, who runs the $800 million Raptor fund, has decided to return money to outside clients, people familiar with the matter said.
George Noble, a former mutual-fund manager who controls some $550 million across two funds named Gyrfalcon, intends to refund clients this month. He describes his 2009 performance in a letter to investors Tuesday as "the most professionally disappointing and personally frustrating of my entire career."
Their simultaneous exits show how veteran investors still regard these markets with caution, despite stocks' recent ascent. The decisions could portend similar moves by other fund managers who, burned by losses and facing pressure from clients, opt to shutter, even as the hedge fund industry's returns have improved.
Mr. Pallotta less than a year ago split off from hedge-fund pioneer Paul Tudor Jones, his investment partner for 15 years. Mr. Pallotta ran Tudor Investment Corp.'s Raptor fund, a stock-picking vehicle that at its peak had $9 billion in assets and some of the best returns in the industry but that hit a money-losing skid starting in mid-2007.
Mr. Pallotta, 51 years old, grew up in Boston's working-class North End neighborhood and became one of the city's richest men and a minority owner of its beloved Celtics professional basketball team. This year, he opened a New York office in addition to his Boston location. Yet amid the market tumult, he kept most of his assets in cash and for now has put fundraising and major organizational decisions on hold, people familiar with the matter said.
