Another Soros goodbye
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June 2, 2000: 1:44 p.m. ET
CEO Duncan Hennes resigns from hedge fund empire; layoffs expected
By Staff Writer Jennifer Karchmer
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Yet another high-level departure is shaking up the hedge fund empire of George Soros, as the resignation of Chief Executive Officer Duncan Hennes was announced Friday.
Hennes' last day in charge of risk management will be June 30, but he will remain on board as a consultant until the end of September, according to Soros spokesman Shawn Pattison. Hennes, 43, a former Bankers Trust treasurer, joined Soros last September.
"He was hired last year to expand the Soros business and franchise and given the events of the past several weeks and months, that won't be the case," Pattison said referring to Soros' April announcement he was revamping his funds.
Hennes' exodus comes on the heels of two other top executives leaving the Soros group in little over a month, as huge losses forced Soros to liquidate some of his funds.
In addition, Pattison confirmed more layoffs and resignations are expected within the company in the next month as the fund revamps its structure. Soros employs about 240 workers in New York and additional 300 throughout the world.
In April, the world's largest hedge fund announced that Stanley Druckenmiller, 46, manager of the Quantum Fund for 12 years, and Nick Roditi, 54, manager of the Quota Fund, would step down as the funds have plunged as much as 33 percent this year. Quantum's assets have dropped by about $4 billion.
"We have come to realize that a large hedge fund like Quantum Fund is no longer the best way to manage money," Soros wrote in a letter to shareholders in April. "Markets have become extremely unstable and historical measures of value at risk no longer apply."
On July 1, Soros will relaunch his flagship fund as the Quantum Endowment Fund, which currently has $6.6 billion in assets.
For the Soros funds, the losses started piling up this year. Quantum Fund, which had been as large as $10 billion in assets in 1998, was at $6 billion at the end of March, according to Barry Colvin, director of research at Tremont Advisors, another fund researcher in Rye, N.Y.
Quantum Fund and Quota Fund were trounced by losses in technology stocks in the last few months as the Nasdaq had been rocked with volatility in April. Quantum had been down 22 percent and Quota down 33 percent, according to HedgeFund.net.
Soros Management runs $13 billion in hedge fund assets, which includes about $3.5 billion in private equity funds.
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