Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has created a new hedge fund focused on multi-asset class and emerging markets. The Washington based fund also carries her name – Albright Capital Management.
The Dutch pension fund PGGM seeded the fund last week when it injected $329 million into Albright Capital.
The Albright fund, which is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, will be lead by Gregory Bowes and John Yonemoto, who are both managing principals and chairs of the investment committee. Albright will chair the new firm.
Yonemoto was previously a managing director at Darby Overseas, where he focused on emerging markets investments.
Bowes spent 20 years at Fairfield Greenwich Group, an alternative investment firm. He also worked for the value arbitrage trading firm, Greenwich Capital Markets.
Albright joins the long list of politicians with no investment experience joining the asset management and alternative investment bandwagons. Politicians following the new trend include: Al Gore, chairman of London-based Generation Investment with former Goldman Sachs Asset Management CEO David Blood; Lawrence Summer and John Snow, two former US treasury secretaries under Bill Clinton and the current George Bush, respectively; Dan Quayle, former US vice president is chairman of Cerberus Global Investments and Richard Breeden, former SEC chairman launched the activist hedge fund Breeden Capital Management.
“I don’t think Albright is running her new hedge fund,” says Sylvie Durham, a structured finance and hedge fund lawyer at the law firm Greenberg Traurig in New York. “Those politicians are lending their name to a hedge fund to give it more marquee value. Dan Quayle, Al Gore-their name gives credibility and legitimacy to the hedge fund. But we all know that these politicians are not in the position of running those funds. They’re more investor relations people, if they’re even doing so much.” The Albright fund has a minimum investment of $25 million, according to the SEC.