Once upon a time Eric Mindich was best known for being the Goldman "wunderkind" - the youngest-ever Goldman partner, who parlayed his reputation into the 2004 launch of his hedge fund Eton Park. Unfortunately for Mindich, after over a decade of running other people's money, the hedge fund apocalypse caught up with the ex-youngest partner, and after a year of losses, which led to an exodus of investors from Mindich’s $12 billion Eton Park Capital Management, which fell about 11% last year, the hedge fund is now said to be returning capital to investors.
According to Bloomberg, Eric Mindich, whose hedge fund startup in 2004 was among the largest in the industry, is returning client capital after 13 years.
Mindich, 49, plans to return all outside funds in New York-based Eton Park Capital Management because he doesn’t believe he’ll be able to run a global, multi-disciplinary investment firm under current conditions, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Readers may recall Eric Mindich for two other notable accomplishments: as we first reported back in September 2009, Mindich was none other than the president of the infamous Plunge Protection Team, as discussed in "What Is Goldman Alum Eric Mindich's Role As Chair Of The Asset Managers' Committee Of The President's Working Group?"
The other notable event involving Mindich was the 2011 report that he was among the hedge fund managers getting direct inside information about the fate of Fannie and Freddie ahead of their bailout, from none other than Hank Paulson, as we discussed in "Hank Paulson Tipped Off The Goldman-Led "Plunge Protection Team" About Fannie Bankruptcy 7 Weeks In Advance."
Paulson... went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” -- a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets."
The gathering comprised some of Wall Street's most storied investors. Mindich, a former chief strategy officer of New York- based Goldman Sachs, started Eton Park in 2004 with $3.5 billion, at the time one of the biggest hedge-fund launches ever. [Dinakar] Singh, a former head of Goldman's proprietary-trading desk, also began his fund in 2004, in partnership with private- equity firm Texas Pacific Group Ltd. Lone Pine's [Stephen] Mandel worked as a retail analyst at Goldman before joining Julian Robertson's Tiger Management LLC, one of the most successful hedge funds of the 1980s and 1990s. He started his own firm in 1997. [Daniel] Och was co-head of U.S. equity trading at Goldman before founding Och-Ziff in 1994. The publicly listed firm managed $28.9 billion in November. One other Goldman Sachs alumnus was at the meeting: Frank Brosens, founder and principal of Taconic Capital Advisors LP, who worked at Goldman as an arbitrageur and who was a protege of Robert Rubin, who went on to become Treasury secretary.
In other words the point of the meeting was nothing short of the former Goldman CEO telling all his former Goldman colleagues just what he was planning on doing in his capacity as Treasury Secretary.
In any case, while we await details as to how this formerly high-flying Icarus crashed so low, here are his biggest holdings:
it is worth noting that NXP, MSFT, and BAC - some of Eton Park's biggest holdings, tumbled on Tuesday, and one wonders if Mindich was the big redemption mentioned earlier this week by Mohamed El-Erian.