Leaving banking and starting your own hedge fund is not an easy business. Hedge funds are closing down all over the place, even crytpo funds which were the most recent shiny thing. Raising investor money is not easy. Achieving returns in a crowded market is harder still. And then there’s the issue of your naming your fund in the first place.
With obvious names like Alpha Capital and Absolute Return Partners claimed long ago, you can always turn to the hedge fund name generator, which has thrown up such gems as Pine Henge Advantage (still available). Alternatively, you can rely on your own brain (or that of your employees) to unearth appropriate words in forgotten languages.
Legendary hedge fund investor Steve Cohen seems to have done the latter. Cohen’s already got himself a new hedge fund (originally called Stamford Harbor Capital but now subsumed into his family office, Point72). However, back in 2013, he seemingly wanted a name for a “quantitative investing project” and settled upon “Aperio”, which means to discover in Latin. The project, which is all about data cleansing and analysis, seems to have floundered after its original manager left, but it was reinvigorated in March when a new person was appointed. Accordingly, articles seem to have been written and seminar appearances arranged to promote the Aperio name, only to find that…someone else owns it already.
The New York Post reports that Cohen is being sued by Aperio Group LLC for sowing confusion among its customers, who think the two Aperios are somehow related. Point72 is, causing “irreparable and substantial injury in the goodwill that Aperio has developed in its Aperio mark,” says the (seemingly original) Aperio, which wants Cohen to stop using its proprietary word and to pay it damages. Let this be a warning to anyone who would name (a subset of) their hedge fund without some heavily Googling first.
Fortunately, Cohen has some other names to fall back on if necessary. Aperio is part of one of three groups at Point72. The others ago by the very straight-up name of, “Data Sourcing and Strategy,” and the more curious, “Point of the Spear.” There are plenty more where that one came from.
Separately, anyone in London who thought they’d paid in big cash bonuses after Brexit has had their hopes dashed by the EU’s Michel Barnier. The dastardly Barnier said yesterday that the UK will have to rely upon equivalence to access EU markets after the split takes place and that this will mean sticking to the EU’s regulations on banking bonuses. Before the financial crisis “remuneration of bankers set the wrong incentives and allowed excessive risk-taking,” he added.
Meanwhile:
Deutsche Bank employs 10,000 people in the U.S. It laid off 300 of them this week. (Financial Times)
Deutsche Bank wants to continue investing in its European rates business. (Financial News)
Laid of U.S. fixed income traders at Deutsche can get jobs at Bank of America, JPMorgan or Citi. Laid off equities traders can go to Goldman, Morgan Stanley or JPM. (New York Times)
Jefferies hired Martin Nicholas from Deutsche Bank for its utilities team. (Financial News)
Now’s the time work in equity derivatives: revenues on some banks’ equity derivatives desks rose 50% in the first quarter. (WSJ)
Fintech company with a reputation for working employees harder than banks becomes Britain’s first tech unicorn. (Reuters)
Barclays just added 10 senior bankers from its non-core business into its FIG business. It now has 60 FIG bankers in London. (Financial News)
If a higher status employee reveals a weakness to a lower status employee, the lower status employee loses respect for the weak boss. (QuietRev)
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