Eric Mandelblatt expects to have raised at least $500 million when his Soroban Capital Partners begins trading stocks next month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the hedge fund firm.
At least two other managers, Mark Carhart and Pierre-Henri Flamand, are slated to open in coming months with half a billion dollars or more each, said the people, who asked not to be named because the firms are private. Helping all three traders pull in at least 10 times more than most hedge fund startups this year may be one line on their resumes: Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Mr. Carhart’s Kepos Capital has 27 employees, while Mr. Flamand’s Edoma Capital Services in London has a payroll of 24, according to the people briefed on their plans.
Executives at the three firms all declined to comment.
The fundraising success of traders with a Goldman Sachs pedigree may bode well for others who leave as the bank disbands its principal-strategies business to comply with new U.S. regulations aimed at curbing risk.
The head of that group, Morgan Sze, may start a hedge fund focused on Asia, two people with knowledge of the matter said last month. A U.S. team of proprietary traders from Goldman Sachs has been talking to fund manager Avenue Capital Group, buyout firm KKR & Co. and investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners about joining one of those firms.
Mr. Mandelblatt started as an energy analyst at Goldman Sachs in 1998. In 2002, he joined the principal strategies group, which traded the bank’s own money, becoming COO of the unit’s U.S. business two years later.
After he left Goldman in 2005, Mr. Mandelblatt went to TPG-Axon Capital Management, where he was co-CEO. He is starting Soroban with Gaurav Kapadia and Scott Friedman, who were both at TPG-Axon.
Mr. Carhart will begin trading client money at Kepos in January. He was co-head of Goldman’s quantitative investment management group and its Global Alpha hedge fund. From 1998 through early 2009, when Mr. Carhart left the bank, Global Alpha averaged returns of 12% a year. The fund, which bought and sold securities based on computer models, lost 40% in 2007 and climbed 2% in 2008.
Kepos will also use computers to trade debt, equities and currencies in developed and emerging markets.
Mr. Flamand will open Edoma in November to trade the stocks and bonds of companies going through corporate events such as mergers and bankruptcies. He worked at Goldman Sachs for 15 years and ran its principal strategies group from London from 2007 until he left in March. He is joined at Edoma by former colleagues Ali Hedayat and Emmanuel Niogret.
