Jew Corrupter: Raanan A. Agus at Goldman Sachs

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Hedge Manager Is Almost Famous

By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
Published: November 14, 2006

Correction Appended

Managers of billion-dollar hedge funds do not usually drive Hondas — except at Goldman Sachs, that is.

Traders at Wall Street investment banks are now priming themselves for another big bonus haul this year. And Raanan A. Agus, the manager of one of Goldman's largest internal hedge funds, and the owner of a Honda minivan, will be in line for one of the richer paydays.

More than any other investment bank, Goldman Sachs relies on trading gains to drive its profits. Mr. Agus had a very good year in 2005 — he is estimated to have made $10 million to $20 million — and he will surely get a raise in 2006. His year is further evidence that on Wall Street, the real money is being made not by investment bankers cutting high-profile deals, but by anonymous traders making risky, profitable bets with their firm's capital.

That Mr. Agus appears to be content to drive a Honda is a reminder that the relatively ascetic sensibility that marked his predecessors, like Robert E. Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, remains in place at Goldman, even in today's gilded era.

Mr. Agus oversees Goldman's principal strategies group, a collection of the firm's elite traders who have at their disposal $10 billion of the firm's own capital to make investments primarily in the stock market, betting on prices rising or on prices falling. Backed by Goldman's balance sheet, it may not be the largest hedge fund, but is arguably one of the more influential, given its exposure to the flow of deals that runs through Goldman, and its strategies are closely tracked on Wall Street.

Its larger sister fund, called the special situations group, has more of a bias toward bonds, currencies and commodities and investing in undervalued assets. At Goldman, gains from trading can account for as much as two-thirds of overall profit, with the majority of this business the result of trades done and risk taken on for clients. Returns from principal strategies and special situations, the two proprietary trading vehicles, account for some 10 to 20 percent of the firm's profits.

Since Mr. Agus took control of the fund in 2004, he has significantly increased the risk profile, in line with a more aggressive approach taken by Goldman's equity trading group.

Unlike other Wall Street banks that are struggling to instill a culture of risk-taking found in today's hedge funds, the principal strategies group run by Mr. Agus has a distinguished pedigree as the original risk arbitrage desk set up by Gustave L. Levy, Goldman's senior partner from 1969 to 1976. In the years after World War II, Mr. Levy took what was then the radical step of using the firm's capital to make bets on whether companies would be taken over or not, a strategy called risk arbitrage.

According to L. Jay Tenenbaum, his successor on the risk arbitrage desk, the trick in those days required less of a reliance on fancy models or sophisticated financial instruments than on instinct and good manners.

"All I did was call directors and accountants or anyone in on the merger and be charming," said Mr. Tenenbaum, who is now 83 and who honored his mentor by giving his youngest son the middle name Gustave. "I just wanted to know when the merger was going to happen." Mr. Tenenbaum hired Mr. Rubin, whose mix of bloodless risk assessment and self-denial became a prototype for future traders, as well as Richard C. Perry, who now runs Perry Capital, a significant hedge fund. A number of other top traders on the desk have gone on to start their own hedge funds, including Edward S. Lampert, Daniel Och, Thomas F. Steyer, Eric Mindich and Dinakar Singh.

But while his predecessors have gone on to claim their greater renown, as well as wealth, Mr. Agus has done all in his power to keep a lid on his public profile. Mr. Agus declined several requests for an interview, and he asked his personal friends as well as his professional acquaintances outside of Goldman not to speak about him.

It is the kind of conduct that John L. Weinberg, the former senior partner, and the driver of a Ford, would have approved. Some people grow and other people swell, he often said of those partners who became too enamored with their successes.

At Goldman, top executives are not allowed to become famous, until they become famous. Rising stars like Mr. Agus are cultivated and nurtured under a thick cloak of anonymity until their money-making talents flower so that they seek their public fortune elsewhere or they rise up into the ranks of senior management.

Take the example of Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's chief executive. For years he labored in relative obscurity as one of the firm's top commodities and fixed-income traders until the extraordinary success of his business propelled him into the firm's leadership.

Of Mr. Agus, "he is a very private man," was all that Haskel Lookstein, the rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, an orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side where Mr. Agus is a trustee, would say.

A Princeton graduate, with a joint law and business degree from Columbia, Mr. Agus, who is 39, also spent a year at Yeshivat Har Etzion, a large yeshiva in Israel where students engage in religious study. He joined Goldman in 1993 and by 2000 he had become partner, a rapid though not unprecedented ascent. He was a top trader in the principal strategies group until 2004, when he assumed sole control after Mr. Singh left to start his own fund.

Described by all who know him as exceedingly modest, Mr. Agus's choice of cars has become a standing joke on Goldman's trading floor. The group he heads comprises 75 professionals. Robert Howard and Kenneth Eberts are the main traders in New York, with Morgan Sze, based in Hong Kong, and Pierre-Henri Flamand, working out of London.

Since the days of Mr. Tenenbaum, the fund's mandate has broadened in line with its growing contribution to Goldman's bottom line: It will take positions in private companies, invest in companies coming out of bankruptcy and make bets on various market-moving events.

Like many traders before him, Mr. Agus has a fondness for brain-challenging games, in his case, chess. Susan Polgar, a grand master, was recently invited by Mr. Agus to take on some of Goldman's top traders in a match and she says it is no surprise that the best traders are also skilled chess players.

"You need an organized mind, lots of focus and you need to know when to start to attack and when not to," she said. "He was sharp — I would say he is in the upper 1 percent of all the people who play chess in the world."

Correction: Nov. 15, 2006

An article in Business Day yesterday about Raanan A. Agus, who oversees billions in investment funds as head of Goldman Sach's principal strategies group, misidentified the rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, who described Mr. Agus as "a very private man." He is Haskel Lookstein — not Joseph H. Lookstein, who was the rabbi's father.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/business/14wall.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

More Corrupt Israeli Jews and Shabbos Goy at Goldman... and their corrupt Jew Bonuses...
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Bank's £51m bonus king revealed

Jonathan Prynn and Pippa Crerar
20 December 2006

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/markets/ar ... z0htXFeM1x


The American investment bank is known to have paid one of its London partners the colossal sum - possibly the biggest bonus in City history, equivalent to £51m.

The first name in the frame was 'proprietary' trader Driss Ben-Brahim. But reports last week that Mr Ben-Brahim landed a £50m bonus have been denied.

Today, the latest name in circulation was French-born trader Pierre-Henri Flamand, 36, who heads the successful in-house hedge fund at Goldman Sachs, which made record global profits of $9.4bn (£4.8bn) this year.

Mr Flamand, who lives in Kensington, runs the Principal Strategies Group at Goldman's Fleet Street offices. He is said to be a highly skilled trader who has shot up through the bank's hierarchy, making partner at the age of just 34.

Like many of the top players at Goldman Sachs, he avoids the conspicuous consumption seen in City booms of the Eighties and late Nineties.

The only deal he has been publicly linked with was a $10m investment in Irish bio-technology firm Bedminster International. According to headhunters, even his monumental earnings are now no longer considered exceptional.

The New York Post quoted one Goldman source saying: 'Apparently, a $100m payout isn't as uncommon as some originally thought.'

Another member of the super elite who measure earnings in nine figures is said to be Morgan Sze, a head principal strategies trader in Hong Kong. Duncan Mackay of specialist hedge fund recruitment firm Hedgehunt, said: 'A small number of people will be making this sort of money... six or seven. 'They are usually running separate businesses, making enormous profits for their banks and getting paid for performance.

'If you are a trader and you make $100m for your bank then you should expect $10m. Similarly, if you are making $1bn then you should expect around $100m.'

Jeanne Branthover, head of financial services at Boyden-Executive Search in New York, said: 'There are only a handful of guys at this end of the scale but a lot of people made $20m, $30m, $40m. If you reach managing director level at Goldman Sachs, you don't jump ship.'

The bulk of the money is in shares or options that lock the employee in for years, not cash. The bank routinely plays down the scale of its workers' pay.

A spokesman said : 'Nobody has earned anything like $100m this year.' However, according to one source, 'the discontent is pretty widespread among the junior ranks'.

A banker at a rival was quoted as saying: 'I've got a row of 25-year-olds outside my door telling me that if they get £200,000 it's not enough.'

This year's record £9bn bonus round has meant a bonanza of spending for retailers. Jewellers Boodles said its Royal Exchange branch is enjoying its best Christmas ever.

Mayor Ken Livingstone called on Gordon Brown to tax the bonuses and spend the money on the environment and housing.

He said: 'It's absolutely and completely obscene if you look at people - senior police officers, firefighters, who put their lives at risk - who are earning a fraction, perhaps a tenth, of the bonuses.'

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/markets/ar ... z0htX6LN3A

[scorpio]

CSR - Your threads on Jew corruptors continue to educate and amaze me. Great research!
It really cuts to the core of the issue.
Thanks for continuing to post these articles    :ugeek: