Zoe Cruz, who was ousted in late 2007 as a co-president at Morgan Stanley, is preparing to make a come back. According to the Wall Street Journal – and people familiar with the situation – Cruz is working on plans to launch a hedge fund.
From the WSJ:
The 54-year-old former Morgan Stanley co-president has begun recruiting employees to join a firm she plans to call Voras Capital Management, these people said. Voras is the Greek word for “north” and the name of a mountainous area near the small town in Greece where she was born.
The planned hedge fund is likely to invest in a variety of distressed assets and make macroeconomic bets on currencies and securities, according to people who have spoken with the former bond-trading executive.
Marketing to investors is expected to begin “in the coming weeks” and the fund plans to launch with about$200m, the WSJ said.
Cruz was dispatched from Morgan Stanley after the division she ran lost almost $4bn on bad mortgage bets. But as Bloomberg noted, losing tons of money at an investment bank is no obstacle to starting afresh in the hedge fund world:
She follows other former bond traders such as Deutsche Bank AG’s Boaz Weinstein in starting her own fund. Weinstein, a bond trader who lost more than $1 billion last year at Deutsche Bank AG, now runs Saba Capital Management LP in New Yor(See also: Brian Hunter, David Ko and Vikram Pandit)
Anyone know what Erin Callan‘s been up to?
Related links:
Madeleine Albright tires of missiles, launches hedge fund – FT Alphaville (2007)