With the current climate surrounding the investment banking culture in the wake of the Barclay’s Libor scandal, it is interesting to read about the story of Steve Clark taken from his interview with Jack Schwager in the Hedge Fund Market wizards.
Clark is a highly successful hedge fund manager, running the Omni Global fund which during the period since inception in 2001 has returned almost 20% per annum, with a maximum peak to trough drawdown of just 7% and not a single losing year. However during the 90s he tells a story of how he was forced out of a major investment bank purely for being honest.
The excerpt from the interview goes as follows:
‘Nomura ended badly for me because there was a change in management. The new guy in charge wasn’t straight. He had a convertible book, and all he was doing was buying illiquid convertible bonds and every month pushing the price up. He was the market because he owned most of these issues. So all he had to do was buy a few hundred bonds every month to push the price up. (more…)
