In May, SkyBridge Capital held its second annual hedge fund conference in Las Vegas, and aimed high for its keynote speaker. The man who addressed the invitation-only audience of 1,400 people was former US President Bill Clinton.

Anthony Scaramucci, who founded the New York-based seeding business in 2005, is not shy about declaring SkyBridge’s ambitions in the hedge fund arena. The conference, he says, is “another way for us to embolden our brand and increase our bandwidth in terms of hedge funds”.

Those ambitions have just received a huge boost with a deal that takes SkyBridge far beyond its current limits. In April, the firm announced that it will buy Citi Alternative Investments’ hedge fund seeding, fund of hedge funds and hedge fund advisory businesses, with $4.2 billion in assets. This will effectively quadruple the size of SkyBridge’s operations to nearly $6 billion when the deal is completed on 30 June.

It is in the seeding business that SkyBridge will gain the most concentrated firepower. Adding the $600 million that Citi has invested in hedge fund start-ups to its own $450 million in invested and committed capital takes SkyBridge beyond $1 billion in seed funding. This will catapult the firm into the top ranks of seeding platforms in the world.

At the same time, SkyBridge has opened an office in Zurich, and is planning to launch a third seed capital fund, SkyBridge III, with a ...

 Read the full text of the article online at http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2010-06-14/desperately-seeking-seeding.

Five weeks ago SkyBridge Capital surprised the financial community with its purchase of three of Citigroup’s alternative investments businesses. Overnight, the New York-based firm’s assets under management and advisory quadrupled to $5.6 billion, making SkyBridge the 34th largest fund of funds business in the world.

Until last month, the five-year-old firm, founded and run by Goldman Sachs alumnus Anthony Scaramucci, had been well known in hedge fund circles as a seeding firm—buying stakes in small and emerging managers—but it was hardly considered a major player in the world of asset management. The acquisition of $4.2 billion of Citi Alternative Investments’ assets changed all that.

But how did Scaramucci take his firm from a small hedge fund seeding shop, successfully steer it through the recession and come out on the other side strong enough to snap up assets from a bulge bracket bank? I recently sat down with the Long Island native to discuss just that, and in the process found that while running SkyBridge may be consuming the majority of Scaramucci’s time, he can add the titles of author, technical adviser on a Hollywood film, and television personality...

Five weeks ago SkyBridge Capital surprised the financial community with its purchase of three of Citigroup’s alternative investments businesses. Overnight, the New York-based firm’s assets under management and advisory quadrupled to $5.6 billion, making SkyBridge the 34th largest fund of funds business in the world.

Until last month, the five-year-old firm, founded and run by Goldman Sachs alumnus Anthony Scaramucci, had been well known in hedge fund circles as a seeding firm—buying stakes in small and emerging managers—but it was hardly considered a major player in the world of asset management. The acquisition of $4.2 billion of Citi Alternative Investments’ assets changed all that.

But how did Scaramucci take his firm from a small hedge fund seeding shop, successfully steer it through the recession and come out on the other side strong enough to snap up assets from a bulge bracket bank? I recently sat down with the Long Island native to discuss just that, and in the process found that while running SkyBridge may be consuming the majority of Scaramucci’s time, he can add the titles of author, technical adviser on a Hollywood film, and television personality...

Up until a month ago, there were actually a few people who had never heard of Anthony Scaramucci. A high-profile deal has given Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital what political operatives call “the big mo” — momentum.

Up until a month ago, there were actually a few people who had never heard of Anthony Scaramucci. Bill Clinton knew the founder and CEO of $1.5 billion hedge fund seeding firm SkyBridge Capital, because the former U.S. president is speaking at a hedge fund conference the firm is putting on in Las Vegas this month.

Hollywood director Oliver Stone also knew Scaramucci — the former Goldman Sachs high-net-worth adviser and CNBC contributor consulted on the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which Stone directed and will screen at the Cannes International Film Festival this month. 

But some in the hedge fund world were still in the dark until mid-April, when SkyBridge announced it was buying Citi’s $4.2 billion fund-of-hedge-funds business. This high-profile deal has given Scaramucci what political operatives call “the big mo” — momentum.

Ever since Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme was uncovered in late 2008, funds-of-hedge-funds -- some of which invested with Madoff even though he shared little information with them -- have been getting squeezed. Massive redemptions and gating -- restrictions limiting withdrawals from hedge funds -- left a lot of the funds, and their investors, without an escape hatch as stocks and bonds plummeted during the credit crisis.

Even so, Scott Prince of SkyBridge Capital sees "a secular trend" of individuals and large pension plans, among others, gradually returning to hedge funds. It can't come too quickly for the funds-of-funds, whose assets have fallen from a high of $826 billion in the second quarter of 2008 to $570 billion more recently, according to industry tracker Hedge Fund Research. Total hedge-fund assets, meanwhile, have begun to creep back up to about $1.67 trillion.

"We have seen a number of mergers and acquisitions in the fund-of-fund industry," says Evan Rapoport, managing partner at hedge-fund database HedgeCo.net, in an e-mail. "However, I would say that we have barely scratched the surface and expect to see a large amount of consolidation. Would-be acquirers wanted to wait and see which funds of funds would survive." The number of hedge-fund-of-funds has fallen to 2,117, compared with 2,439 fund of funds at the end of 2008.

That's where buyers like Prince's SkyBridge come in. The five-year old New York alternative-asset manager is expanding beyond a core business of providing seed money to emerging hedge funds. It is buying the funds-of-hedge-funds, hedge-fund advisory contracts, and seed assets of Citigroup, which has been selling non-core assets. The purchase price wasn't disclosed, but the deal will nearly quadruple SkyBridge's assets to $5.6 billion.

"Citi's fund of fund business is very attractive due to the long and distinguished track records that [its] mix of products have achieved and the diversified client base that these products serve," says Prince, a SkyBridge managing partner and Goldman Sachs alumnus.

A fund-of-funds holds a portfolio of hedge funds rather than investing directly in stocks, bonds, or other securities. Managers try to select the best-performing funds, and the diverse portfolio is supposed to provide greater stability. Fund-of-funds managers charge higher fees than single managers because the underlying managers must also get paid and their experience and due diligence skills can make it worthwhile. (Of course, the Madoff revelations severely undercut the latter argument.)

SkyBridge will continue to provide seed capital for fledgling hedge funds.

The firm focuses on managers who run diversified portfolios with a focus on risk management, says Prince. But SkyBridge not only seeds hedge funds, it helps them grow by providing them with marketing know-how and risk-management oversight, and by helping raise future capital. An investor in a SkyBridge-seeded fund gets a stake in the fund, which can one day be monetized -- sold either to another investor or back to the fund manager. The investor also gets his regular return and a cut in the fund manager's annual incentive and management fees.

SkyBridge has seeded a dozen hedge funds since it began operations. But it sees as many as 700 hedge-fund business plans a year.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of preeminent hedge fund seeding and incubation firm SkyBridge Capital, spoke with HedgeFund.net about his idea of the U.S. government issuing sovereign equity, the tremendous opportunity that exists in emerging hedge fund managers and his company’s upcoming SALT hedge fund conference.

The event, scheduled for May 19 to 21, 2010 in Las Vegas, will include keynote speakers President Bill Clinton, former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney and Professor Nouriel Roubini.

Q: What is your outlook on this macro economic recovery?

A: The majority of economic data as it relates to unemployment and consumer spending is that we have been on an asset tear, and an upward revaluation of assets after the crisis primarily induced by the Federal Reserve Bank monetary policy. But, we really haven’t seen a dramatic employment recovery at this point. My belief is that the back half of the year is going to be stronger than people expect just because now the American corporation and American small business owner is probably in a very lean capacity situation. With capacity utilization being that tight and having such a lean situation, that offers more room for more workers. My bet is that ...

Read the full text of the article online at http://www.hedgefund.net/publicnews/default.aspx?story=11176.

Hedge fund mergers and acquisitions activity might be picking up, but the nature of the deals is changing, as strategic imperatives become more important than purely financial gain. Diversification and distribution are the main drivers.

Last week, hedge fund seeding firm SkyBridge Capital announced it had bought fund of funds, hedge funds seeding and hedge fund advisory businesses from Citi Alternative Investments.

Also last week US asset manager Sciens Capital Management said it had bought the hedge fund business of rival Partners Group.

Ben Phillips, partner at management consultancy Casey Quirk, said that while financial considerations drove hedge fund M&A activity before the crisis, “this time around strategy is the driver”.

Before the ...

Read the full text of the article online at http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2010-04-19/diversification-and-distribution-drive-change.

Citigroup Inc. said it will sell its hedge-fund business to alternative-investment firm SkyBridge Capital LLC, as it sheds yet another of its noncore assets.

Financial terms of the deal, in which SkyBridge will buy Citi Alternative Investments' hedge-fund, hedge-fund seeding and hedge-fund advisory businesses, weren't disclosed. CAI's investments under management and advisory total $4.2 billion. SkyBridge said the deal will position it as "one of the leading global alternative asset managers" with $5.6 billion in assets under management.

The businesses being acquired are part of Citi Holdings, which is made up of Citi's noncore assets and businesses that the financial-services giant is in the process of unloading. Citi's Raymond Nolte, who has led the businesses at CAI since 2005, will become chief investment officer and a managing partner at SkyBridge, bringing with him a team of 20.

"The integration of a fund-of-hedge-funds business is a natural fit with the SkyBridge platform, and this deal is a result of our long-term strategy to acquire assets that maximize value for investors," said Skybridge Managing Partner Anthony Scaramucci.

Citi last year earmarked $715 billion in noncore assets to be sold, liquidated or wound down as it sought to reduce its risk profile during the market meltdown that saw the U.S. government take a roughly one-quarter ownership stake currently at 27%. Roughly one-quarter of those assets had been shed by the end of 2009.

Shares of Citigroup rose 2.2% to $4.72 in recent premarket trading amid the release of strong first-quarter results from rival J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. 

Read the full text of the article online at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304798204575183680070925988.html.

Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul is a guidebook showing how the best manifestations of ambition, entrepreneurship and mentoring can lead to a life that fulfills more than financial obligations and leaves a legacy to which others can aspire.  Gordon Gekko of the film Wall Street has become a symbol in popular culture for unrestrained greed (with the signature line, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good"), often in fields outside corporate finance. This book is the antidote. It will use what Scaramucci has learned to guide Americans – to not only avoid the kind of crisis that briefly crippled the U.S. economy but to build a core set of values that will allow them to find wealth on their own terms. His solution lies in understanding people, capital, and culture – and being able to use that knowledge to enrich your life, financially as well as spiritually. What does that mean practically? It means developing the capacity to bounce back from failure in the true spirit of entrepreneurship, building a circle of competence made of those you trust; and mentoring others and becoming part of their circle. It means seeing capitalism as an art and businesses as creations and vocations and not simply as levers to feeding self-esteem.

Visit http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470619546?ie=UTF8&tag=skybcapi-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0470619546 to learn more.

BY ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, MANAGING PARTNER OF SKYBRIDGE CAPITAL

This year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting kicked off with a much more optimistic feel than the last, which took place during the continuing deep uncertainty of the credit crisis. But that is not saying much. The mood remains dark, as reflected in the conference’s overarching themes so far.

The talk has been all about how to heal the financial crisis in the West, address the issue of systemic market risk, the low-to-no economic growth, continuing high unemployment figures and, in general, a discontent with the current political environment.

Still, maybe there is some good news in all of these sober views from world leaders, bankers, industry leaders and the like. As one speaker noted "typically the consensus here is wrong, so for this, there is a reason to be optimistic and most of the speakers are dour."

I’m an optimist. And for me, the important takeaways from day one...

Read the full text of the article online at
http://www.iimagazine.com/worldeconomicforum/wef_executive_interviews/Articles/2383094/Davos-Diary-of-Anthony-Scaramucci-Alternative-Investment-Manager-SkyBridge-Capital.html.

BY SCOTT PRINCE, MANAGING PARTNER OF SKYBRIDGE CAPITAL

"The best of times, the worst of times" means one thing to an English major and something else entirely to a manager entering the roiled waters of today's alternative asset market. Without a doubt, this is no time for the faint-hearted. However, for those determined to put money to work in today's market—whether a new or seasoned manager—the rules of the road have decidedly changed. The once familiar alternatives terrain has been recast in ways that seek to redefine the manner in which hedge funds have long operated. The new roadmap for running a hedge fund looks very different in a variety of critical areas.

The Environment. Today's challenging environment for hedge funds is different from previous economic setbacks in many, but not all, ways. While this financial crisis has outlasted any other in the memories of most active managers, impacting everything from regulatory oversight to fund structure, investor behavior has remained as predictable as ever … 

Read the full text of the article online at #ff9900">http://www.parsintl.com/20136.pdf.