Steven A. Cohen beat them, and now he wants them to join him.
The billionaire investor, who managed to fend off a criminal insider trading investigation of himself, if not of his former hedge fund, is looking for a former prosecutor and several agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to join his new $10 billion investment firm, Point72 Asset Management, said several people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The prospective law enforcement hirings appear to be another chapter in Mr. Cohen’s continuing effort to prove to federal authorities that his new firm will not tolerate the kind of aggressive behavior that led to eight people who once worked for his former hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, to either plead guilty or be convicted of insider trading. SAC itself also pleaded guilty to securities fraud, paid $1.8 billion in fines to the federal government and agreed to stop managing money for outside investors — which is why Point72 is a family office that manages just his personal fortune.
Mr. Cohen’s new firm has taken a number of steps to polish its image since SAC entered its guilty plea a year ago. Point72 is in the process of putting together an outside board of advisers to review its management practices. It has also signed a deal with Palantir Technologies, a software company that receives backing from the Central Intelligence Agency, to monitor trading. The firm has said it is now paying bonuses to employees who report unethical behavior.
In April, the firm announced the hiring of a former federal prosecutor, Vincent Tortorella, to serve as its chief compliance and surveillance officer. Mr. Tortorella is overseeing the search to bring several F.B.I. agents into the firm. The executive search firm Spencer Stuart is running the search for a new general counsel, the people briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Cohen’s effort to recast his image is seen by some securities law experts as part of a plan to pave the way for his eventual return to managing money for others — something his former hedge fund did for a little over two decades and in the process generated some of the highest annual returns in the hedge fund industry.
“It could be window dressing, but it’s possible this experience has really shaken him,” said Erik Gordon, a professor of business at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. “He would much rather still be in the game and managing other people’s money.”
Mark Herr, a spokesman for Mr. Cohen, said the 58-year-old investor had no desire to manage outside money again.
The firm’s makeover comes after an appellate court ruling that dealt a major blow to the campaign against insider trading being waged by the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara. The ruling, which overturned the convictions of two hedge fund managers, could make it more difficult for prosecutors to pursue insider trading cases against traders who are far removed from the source of a potentially illegal stock tip.
Last week’s ruling, by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, is said to have heartened Mr. Cohen, according to another person briefed on the matter.
Against that backdrop, his recent recruitment effort is causing a stir in law enforcement circles, given the prominent role that Mr. Cohen and his former $14 billion hedge fund have played in the government’s insider trading investigation, the people briefed on the matter said.
So far, none of the F.B.I. agents or former prosecutors approached about taking a job at Point72 have expressed any serious interest despite the promise of hefty salaries, the people briefed on the matter said. One person briefed on the matter said F.B.I. agents have “rebuffed” the overtures.
In an interview, Mr. Tortorella confirmed that Point72 was looking to bring in people with law enforcement backgrounds to bolster both its internal compliance effort and the recruitment of new employees. He recently hired a person from the C.I.A. and another from the New York City Police Department to help with the effort.
“We had the corporate equivalent of a heart attack, and we need to make sure that never happens again,” said Mr. Tortorella, who noted that the firm’s compliance and surveillance team had grown by 20 percent this year, to 35 employees. “There’s a determination from the top down that history does not repeat itself here.”
Other big money managers have looked to law enforcement for either a top legal or compliance job. Ray Dalio’s hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, with about $120 billion under management, hired James B. Comey, a former United States attorney for Manhattan, as its general counsel in 2010. Mr. Comey left Bridgewater in 2013, when President Obama tapped him to head the F.B.I. Mr. Dalio’s firm also recruited Arthur M. Cummings, a former executive assistant director of the F.B.I., to serve as its chief security officer. Mr. Cummings has since moved to a similar job at General Electric.
Mr. Cohen still has to deal with a pending civil administrative claim of failure to supervise that was lodged against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The S.E.C.’s administrative action poses a threat to any plan he might have to eventually manage money of outside investors again, as he could be barred from ever returning to the securities industry.
But the decision last week that overturned the insider trading convictions of the former hedge fund managers Anthony Chiasson and Todd Newman may have strengthened Mr. Cohen’s legal hand. Legal experts say the decision casts doubt on the insider trading conviction of the SAC portfolio manager Michael Steinberg, a longtime confidant of Mr. Cohen’s, who was convicted of trading on the same stock tips as Mr. Chiasson and Mr. Newman. The court’s ruling also may give Mr. Steinberg’s former analyst at SAC, Jon Horvath, grounds to withdraw his guilty plea.
If both Mr. Steinberg’s conviction and Mr. Horvath’s guilty plea are dismissed, it would weaken the S.E.C.’s claim, which is based in part on the criminal charges against both men.
“As a practical matter a lot of wind has come out of the S.E.C.’s failure-to-supervise action,” Mr. Gordon, the Michigan business professor, said.
As of early October, Mr. Cohen’s new firm, which has about 870 employees, was said by people briefed on the matter to have generated a year-to-date gross profit of $1.8 billion.