Bear dealmaker shifts to hedge fund

by Dave Nixon

Story link: Bear dealmaker shifts to hedge fund

Lou Friedman, one of Bear Stearns’ most experienced dealmakers, is departing the Wall Street bank to join Peter Schoenfeld Asset Management, the hedge fund.

Mr Friedman, a Wall Street old hand who is vice-chairman of Bear’s investment banking division and chairman of its mergers and acquisitions unit, will join PSAM later this year to initiate a fund that will spotlight on private equity deals and other longer-term investments.

This week Olivier Sarkozy, a senior UBS banker specialising in financial institutions, announced he was going to join Carlyle, the private equity group.

Other bankers to make the switch include Scott Kapnick, who left Goldman Sachs to join Highbridge, the hedge fund, and Jeff McDermott, the former co-head of UBS’s investment banking division, who moved to Stony Lane Partners, a private equity group focussing on distressed investments.

PSAM, which manages about $3bn, is a multi-strategy fund specialising in areas such as merger arbitrage and distressed debt.

Peter Schoenfeld, the firm’s creator, said the predicament had fashioned opportunities for chasing longer-term investments.

The fund is anticipated to have a long-standing lock-up that will permit it to pursue private equity-style investments, although it may furthermore take stakes in public companies and debt across an assortment of different industries.

Mr Friedman is one of the primary senior Bear bankers to desert from the time when the bank hit problems last summer following the disintegration of two of its hedge funds that had invested greatly in securities linked to the subprime mortgage market.