A Hedge Fund Grows in Brooklyn
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009Claude S. Dutchy featured in Hedge Funder
And here’s what some are saying about HEDGE FUND:
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Dale Harpsicord of The Greenback Century calls Hedge Fund "A Fundancial Laugh Riot. I shit my pants...TWICE!" FOUR STARS
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Helene Crossarrow-Hernandez of Nickels and Sense raves, "A true orignial. Hedge Fund stayed with me for days, even after I got laid off from this newspaper!"
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Mortimer Schwarzbaum of Bazooka Capital spits, "Who the F@#$^ are these guys! They've made me want to raise my fees and say to hell with it all!
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Robbie Tony, New York Times Best-Selling Author and Motivational Speaker, says, "If these guys can do it, anybody can! They're living proof of Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Personal Knowledge."
Brooklyn- Hedge Funds, that once ubiquitous term, which rose meteorically through the eighties and nineties to become the Kings of Wall Street, look more like rooks in a crumbling game of chess- once subordinate vassals now running arms akimbo to the hills to rule themselves. With the majority of investors sitting on the side lines waiting out the financial crisis, Hedge Funds are losing profits, clients, and in many cases, themselves. And with the prospect of the Federal Government not only taking over majority shares of private banks, but regulating many of the private investment vehicles, many equity managers are witnessing the death of the once kingly, elitist, deregulated, and mythical Hedge Fund.
Au contraire mofraire.
Four unremarkable, perhaps dopey, and seemingly under qualified financiers would have you believe otherwise. The partners of Claude S. Dutchy, LLC firmly assert that there is, in fact, no better time than now to start a Hedge Fund. This infectious optimism is quite succinctly folded into their motto, “Full of Bull in a Bear Market,” like buttercream in a nutcake.
Sitting on the only couch in the offices of Claude S. Dutchy, LLC, a pre-war tenement with cracked paint and uneven floors, one thing becomes apparent. This Hedge Fund is not your typical “white-shoe” firm, and they’ve got innovation written all over their faces. Eschewing a traditional office, Claude Thornbush, Skip Murphy, Dutch Alison, and Phillipe Rochambeau have transformed their one-bedroom, Williamsburg apartment into an almost seamless, utopian office environment where no one seems to sleep- there is neither space nor time for it. The walls are adorned not with accolades and certificates of financial achievement, but with tigers, lions, and a swimming baby elephant. As CEO Claude Thornbush beams, “We’re in the Serengeti here, alone, frightened, but with that feeling of isolation and survival. We want to get up, polish off that antelope carcass from the night before and maybe get some coffee, read the paper, look up some stuff, and then make a call or two.”
They may not seem like your traditional Hedge Fund partners- no one who works at the Fund has a post-graduate degree, nor a particular financial lineage- but one thing is for certain. They are long on themselves. As Dutch Alison put it, “We are poised to fill the widening private equity void and perhaps become The Last of the Hedge Funds. Like Chingascook, the last Mohican, circling with that blue, wooden axe to that badass music, slicing Mogwai in half and kicking his body off the cliffs to that Netherdom below.” After spending a quiet afternoon with the Claude S. Dutchy Partners, LLC, one thing seems inevitable. They live together as one, they believe in the blood, sweat, and tears of dreams. And they are ready to be, if not the princes of finance, the warriors in that proverbial Serengeti where kings once reigned.
– Gene Wilderbarn
Hedge Funder Magazine
