(Bloomberg) At the turn of the century, hedge-fund billionaire Daniel Och sent protege Michael Cohen, still in his twenties, to spearhead Och-Ziff’s expansion into Europe. Cohen’s team bet so successfully on equities and corporate deals that less than a decade later he was able to buy a 900-acre estate in the English countryside.
A relentless investor with little patience for small talk, he was always looking for his next score, say people who know him. That led him, in 2007, to begin a series of bets promising outsized profits and, as it turned out, even larger risks that shook Och-Ziff Capital Management LP to its core.
