Fir Tree Capital - culture, investment philosophy, performance?
Hi team:
Curious on if anyone here knows about Fir Tree Capital - from Googling, seems to be a firm that can invest everywhere in capital structure. I've also found some other google articles around its founders and history, etc.
Could someone who's familiar with them comment on culture, what are the people like, investment discipline, etc.?
Thanks!
my boss was a senior guy there so I've spoken to a bunch of people at fir tree. Very smart guys, they invest across the cap structure and in diff geographies.
Bump
A buddy of mine was relatively senior and recently left. They are posting jobs on LinkedIn (one was for a SPAC fund they are trying to raise). Essentially my friend said to avoid the shop unless its a way into the HF industry. AUM has fallen, performance has been poor, pay is poor and churn of analysts by essentially not paying them is high. Lots of lazy MDs/Partners about clipping whatever they can as long as they can.
This is literally what the guy was telling me so please take what I say here with a grain of salt. I can certainly attest to performance and AUM personally since I see these things as an allocator, but not the rest. Hope this helps.
This is accurate and reflects conversations I've had with a former senior guy at Fir Tree who also left in the last few years (maybe we're talking about the same person?). Essentially, it was a top tier shop at a point in time before losing the best people people and the majority of AUM (went from something like $13BN to $3BN). Now it has all the negative attributes that go along with that as the remaining senior team fight over larger pieces of a much smaller pie.
When did it start to fail? Mostly asking because I was hoping to join a SM started by a senior ex-Fir Tree guy but want to make sure it was when it was good vs. bad haha
This description hits where it hurts for so many hedge funds out there.....
lol, exactly what i was going to say. Excluding tech-focused SMs, the fir tree description applies to several "prestigious" SMs.
They've been smoked with redemptions
They were a top player in credit - especially in sovereigns and distressed throughout late 90s and early 2000s... AUM drained from $17B to now just $700mm (mostly founders money... $170mm of that is a mutual fund where they only get a management fee)... it's a totally new team today run by a young Indian guy and 4 brand new analysts. he's totally new to the HF world and is mostly an equity guy. I met him - not a credit guy, had the educational pedigree but could not talk names. Still a decent shop if you have no other options.
Wow this is very informative! Are there any credit funds similar to Fir Tree (but not on a downward trajectory)?
Bump - after a few years at fir tree could a senior person move to a risk taking role at p72/citadel? Or too much of beta/factor fund so hard to be seen as a real investor
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