More facts on Trinity I Fund ie: Thomas M Taylor...:) mulla711
6/7/99
A veteran money manager for the Bass brothers, looking to leverage his connection to the wealthy Texas family, is trying to launch a $2.5 billion hedge fund.
Thomas M . Taylor , who has managed money for the Bass family for 20 years, in recent months has canvassed institutional investors for his venture, to be called BBT Partners. Mr. Taylor, 56 years old, is pitching BBT as a low-risk, market-neutral fund that will mix strategies ranging from stocks to merger arbitrage. He has told investors his 10-year return at Bass for those strategies averaged 18% a year, before fees, compared with 19% for Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.
Mr. Taylor is following a well-worn path into the world of hedge funds, which are private investment pools for wealthy individuals and institutions. Managers build a track record managing money for a brand-name investment entity, then use that record to market themselves directly to investors. Managers at Soros Fund Management, for example, regularly strike out on their own.
Other former Bass money managers have used their connection as a launching pad for their own large investment firms. These include Richard Rainwater of Rainwater Inc., David Bonderman and James Coulter of Texas Pacific Group and Thomas Barrack of Colony Capital Inc.
By aiming to raise $2.5 billion, with a $25 million minimum investment, Mr. Taylor is trying to vault into the ranks of the nation's largest hedge funds. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is marketing the fund to well-heeled customers through a separate feeder fund, called Lehman BBT Fund, with a $500,000 minimum. Mr. Taylor's management company plans to keep 20% of the fund's profit.
Mr. Taylor declined to comment on the effort, as did a Lehman Brothers spokesman, citing Securities and Exchange Commission prohibitions on discussing hedge-fund money raising.
Bass family members, including Bass Brothers principals Sid and Lee Bass, plan to invest a total of at least $250 million, according to people familiar with the family's investments. That is less than the amount Mr. Taylor has managed for them at times in the past, these people say, but that amount fluctuates with the markets.
Although Mr. Taylor has told investors he has never had a down year in the sectors in which the hedge fund will invest, his track record isn't without blemishes. Trinity I Fund, a separate investment entity he manages with money from the Basses, has an 8% stake in Harnischfeger Industries Inc., a Milwaukee industrial machinery maker, initially purchased at about $30 a share. Another entity managed by Mr. Taylor, with investment capital from Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, holds a 10% stake in Loewen Group Inc., the Canadian funeral-home operator that filed for bankruptcy-court protection earlier this week. Mr. Taylor resigned from Loewen's board last week.
But money managers who have heard the pitch for the new hedge fund predict that Mr. Taylor will attract institutional investors, although the 10-year returns haven't matched those of the overall stock market. The returns are "good enough for what he's proposing: a product with low volatility," says one investor who heard the pitch. |
