Three salespeople surround a speakerphone in a glass-fronted store across from the main New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, talking with counterparts in Chicago and Toronto. In the lobby, flat-panel TVs run a loop of commercials for commodity investments.
Here, wedged among discount electronics retailers and mobile phone vendors, is what former Vienna cop and college dropout Christian Baha says is the next wave of investing: a company called Superfund that’s hawking hedge fund-style funds to the masses.
Baha has starred in his own commercials and sponsors U.S. skier Bode Miller and the American Ballet Theatre. In the fall, he rubbed shoulders with “Desperate Housewives” actor Teri Hatcher andmodel Claudia Schiffer at the Women’s World Awards in New York, a program that Superfund backs and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev heads.
