Business Week – Bruce Kovner is betting he can pull off what eluded Stanley Druckenmiller and George Soros: keeping his hedge fund firm alive after he moves on. On Sept. 13, Kovner named Chief Investment Officer Andrew Law, 45, to run his $10 billion Caxton Associates. Kovner, 66, who started the New York firm in 1983, told clients in a letter that he will retire by the end of the year. Peter D’Angelo, 64, the firm’s president and co-founder, will also step aside.
Caxton is confronting a difficult challenge faced by a growing number of hedge funds: managing the transition to new leadership in a business where success is built on the founders’ trading skill and reputation. In the past year or so at least three top hedge fund managers stopped investing client money. Soros, the 81-year-old billionaire, told investors in July that he would turn Soros Fund Management into a family office. Druckenmiller, 58, shuttered his Duquesne Capital Management in August 2010. Kovner declined to comment, as did officials for other hedge funds mentioned in this story.
