Hedge Fund News: Bill Ackman, Michael Elfers, Paul Mulvaney

Former SAC Executive Raises About $1 Billion For New Hedge-Fund Firm (Wall Street Journal)
Former SAC Capital Advisors LP chief operating officer Solomon “Sol” Kumin is close to lift off with the launch of a roughly $1 billion hedge fund. Mr. Kumin’s Folger Hill Asset Management LLC has raised about $1 billion as it looks to start trading in March, a person familiar with the firm said. His new employees include Lisa Baroni, a former U.S. Attorney who helped prosecute the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. Ms. Baroni will head compliance for the new firm. As The Wall Street Journal first reported last summer, Mr. Kumin’s new stock-focused firm secured a $400 million investment from Leucadia National Corp. in exchange for a near-50% ownership stake in the new firm. Folger Hill is named after a lookout point on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, where Mr. Kumin’s family spends vacations.

Computer-Driven Hedge Funds End Three-Year Losing Streak (Wall Street Journal)
A little-known but long-established London hedge fund showed a clean pair of heels to peers last year, ratcheting up a gain of almost 70% as funds of its style staged a comeback in Europe. Mulvaney Capital Management’s Global Markets fund, which gained 67.4%, was the standout performer in Europe in a year when a tumbling oil price and sinking bond yields provided money-making trades for only a handful of star performers in broadly lackluster year for European hedge fund managers. Mulvaney, set up in 1999 by Paul Mulvaney, a former Merrill Lynch options trader with a background in computer science, belongs to the group of trend-following computer-driven hedge funds that gained more than 11% on average, ending a three-year losing streak.

Investors Cut Hedge Fund Bets in January (Reuters)
Investors’ interest in hedge funds fell in January as they pulled out more cash than they invested, data showed on Tuesday, part of an annual rejig of portfolios. The SS&C GlobeOp Capital Movement Index, which calculates monthly hedge fund subscriptions minus redemptions, fell 2.95 percent in January, the sharpest drop in a year. That compared with a rise of 0.39 percent in December. “In line with year-end portfolio rebalancing, January net capital flows were negative, with higher capital activity overall,” said Bill Stone, chairman and CEO of SS&C Technologies.