Soros acolyte Scott Bessent recently bagged one of the largest hedge fund startups in history. At $4.5 billion, Bessent’s fund raise for Key Square Group is just $500 million short of Pointstate Capital’s $5 billion start in 2011, and $3.5 billion more than Chris Rokos’ $1 billion launch in 2015. Even more impressive is the fact that he had to turn away capital. According to Bloomberg, Bessent raised most of the cash from less than 10 institutions and was forced to cap his fund’s initial assets.
As big a score as that is, it isn’t exactly his greatest achievement. Here’s a brief list of his others:
- White Wednesday. It may have been Druckenmiller’s trade and Soros may have taken all the credit, but Bessent – at the time Quantum’s London-based portfolio manager – was the one who studied the U.K. housing market and told his bosses that the “British government had no stomach for higher rates” and would rather devalue than cripple the economy. What followed is now in the annals of hedge fund history.
- Massive returns. Bessent has racked up one of the most impressive track records a fund manager can have. During his earlier stay at Quantum, he scored a compounded annual return of 30% for nine years, and while his recent performance is still under wraps, it’s widely known that he made over $1 billion betting against the yen in 2013. He did, however, have a huge hiccup during the tech bubble.
- Bessent Capital. If you think raising a ten-figure fund in the 2010’s is hard, try raising one in 2000. Bessent launched his eponymous fund with $1 billion in capital then, including $150 million from Soros. To put things into perspective, Tiger Global was launched at the same time with just $25 million from Julian Robertson.
So that’s that. Now time to see if he could live up to all the hype.
Photo: International Monetary Fund