Tetragon Financial Group bought Polygon Management, a hedge fund firm founded by the same management team, for about $99 million as the publicly traded investor in structured loans expands its business.
Tetragon used 11.7 million of its non-voting shares to buy Polygon, a London hedge fund started by Reade Griffith and Paddy Dear, the Guernsey, Channel Islands-based company said in a statement Monday. The purchase price is based on the $8.43 closing price of Tetragon shares on Oct. 26.
Messrs. Griffith and Dear are both principals and directors of Tetragon, which invests in assets including collateralized loan obligations, according to the firm’s website. Tetragon is adding the pair’s affiliated business based on a view that money management companies need to have as much capital, investment experience and infrastructure as possible to succeed following the 2008 financial crisis, Mr. Dear said.
“By putting it together, we think it really provides the three pieces of the puzzle,” Mr. Dear said in an interview.
Mr. Dear, formerly of UBS AG, and Mr. Griffith, formerly of Citadel, founded Polygon in 2002. It manages about $450 million in hedge funds, according to the statement.
Tetragon also announced plans to buy back as much as $150 million of its non-voting Tetragon shares.
The Polygon Global Opportunities Fund, which was once the firm’s biggest hedge fund with $8 billion of assets at its peak, suspended investor withdrawals after it lost money following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings in 2008.
