Monday 6 September 2010

Stenham Asset Management has bought Montier Partners

But it's a bit confusing. Total assets under management will be $3.5 billion. A tidy sum! That's not confusing. That's crystal skull clear. The confusing bit is who will be working where, what they'll be doing, and how much equity they will have. As I understand it, Dominique Montier and Jeremy Alun-Jones are joining Stenham's investment committee (with equity stakes). And they are bringing six of their mates along from Montier Partners (with equity stakes? I doubt it). Montier is some sort of boutique, by the way. I don't know what it sells. Stenham is a fund of hedge funds firm. Combined, they are going to be ... whatever, a bigger fund of hedge funds firm, I suppose. I wouldn't be surprised. I'm just wondering what Kevin Arenson is going to be doing in the new, enlarged firm. He's Stenham’s managing director - at the moment, but Jeremy Alun-Jones will be taking that job, leaving Kevin at a loose end, really. I've heard a rumour he's going to focus on investment management and risk control, but I can't see that happening. I've known Kevin for years. He's a good friend of mine. I haven't spoken to him for a while. He's a wild man though! A total lunatic for the burning. I can't see him focusing on risk control. This guy lives for danger. Have I told you about the time Kevin got lost in astral sky? Wandering in endless night, he was, amongst the stars. By all accounts (including my own), he loved every minute of it.

Kevin voluntarily went through the sort of hell I will be putting young Mark Westwood through. The man's an adventurer! He left his body one night at the end of summer, a few years ago. He went straight for the astral sky. He knew what he wanted, and he had the courage to go for it. A lot of mystic money men (and practically all financial shamans) have done this. It's no big deal in itself. But Kevin did something that was absolutely unique. Once he had left the earth, so high in the not-so-friendly astral sky, he decided to merge with it, to lose his identity. Now, that is a dangerous thing to do. Imagine it! To become a bit of the sky?! Oh, you let so many things in, you see. At night, any passing dark force can enter you. I mean, they love the night, the dark ones. They love the night sky because they can hide in it. Kevin left himself open to attack. And it was an awful attack. Such extreme mystical violence. You should see the scars on Kevin's astral body. Do the scars bother him? Not a bit! He's proud of them! He'll show them to anyone. You have to understand that Kevin is an astral warrior. Even if his astral body had been destroyed, leaving his physical body empty and useless, he wouldn't have cared.

O Master, he would have been dead, surely?

Yeah. After the attack, and a bit more wandering in endless night (well, it's endless if you stay, it's potentially endless, I suppose I shouldn't use that word, it's not completely accurate), he reassembled himself and flew back down to earth. And I was there. I witnessed the whole thing. This isn't a made-up story, if that's what you’re thinking. I know it sounds fantastic. But remember what Shakespeare (Hamlet) said: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.' Although not my philosophy, of course. Just yours, dear reader. I am the world's foremost financial shaman, after all.

Anyway, I hope everything works out for Kevin in the new set-up at Stenham. Risk control, ha!