BeaconLight Capital is an American hedge fund that is based out of New York, New York. It is one of the younger hedge funds out there, as it was set up by Mr. Ed Bosek in 2010.
The investor set up his hedge fund when he was 29, and like his peers in the hedge fund industry, he also spent time working in the industry before launching his own fund. Prior to setting up BeaconLight Capital, Mr. Bosek worked at the famed investment bank Deutsche Bank and at the European hedge fund Atticus. He grew up in New York’s Staten Island and attended the Regis High School in Manhattan.
When he was younger, the executive did not want to enter the financial world, and instead, he was more attracted to the medical profession. He enrolled in the illustrious University of Pennsylvania to become a doctor, and it was during this time at the university that he interacted with students from the Wharton School of Business. This led to a growing interest in finance and economics developing for Mr. Bosek, and he would go on to abandon his medical dreams and instead pursue a Master of Business Administration from Wharton as part of his undergraduate courses.
After graduation, the executive moved to Europe for an internship with Deutsche Bank, and after initially accepting a full time offer, he decided to leave the investment bank and join the hedge fund world. During his search for the perfect fund, he would come to like the approach of Atticus Capital’s founder Mr. Tim Barakett, and go on to join the fund’s European team. Atticus’ differences from traditional investment banks and larger hedge funds would attract Mr. Bosek, and he would go on to become the fourth member of the team.
During his time at Atticus, the now hedge fund executive would see the fund’s portfolio grow from $1 billion to $22 billion in 2007. He left Atticus in 2009, stating that it was becoming harder to generate strong returns for large portfolio sizes. A year later, Mr. Bosek set up BeaconLight Capital with just $50 million in funds. His new hedge fund would focus intensely on research and develop an investment approach that is described as FMD. Short for “fundamental, meaningful, and different”, ‘fundamental’ analyzes a business’s underlying drivers, ‘meaningful’ estimates the sheer impact that a company can make through outperforming expectations, and ‘different’ emphasizes the fund’s ability to take positions that others in the industry would balk at.
We don’t have a lot of information on Ed Bosek’s Beaconlight Capital. We know that the fund went activist on Jos. A. Bank in 2013. Beaconlight’s Offshore fund, which was launched at the end of 2009, had $163 million in AUM (October 2014). The long/short equity hedge fund lost 4.6% in 2014 (through November) and 5.8% in 2011. The fund made up for these losses by gaining 22.4% in 2013 and 6.8% in 2012. The fund’s maximum drawdown was 15% between March 2011 and September 2011.
