FBR Founder’s Fund Profits From Big Government Bemoaned by Bacon
This article is for subscribers only.
For many hedge funds, financial rules and state intervention in markets are anathema. Emanuel J. Friedman, former co-chairman of investment bank Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group Inc., sees them as an opportunity.
Friedman’s $2.6 billion EJF Debt Opportunities Fund surged 29 percent last year by making bets on how lenders would alter their capital structure after the Dodd-Frank Act, according to investors in the pool. Run from suburban Virginia, five miles west of the U.S. Capitol, it has averaged gains of 21 percent a year since inception in June 2008, compared with the 4.4 percent annual increase posted by other debt-focused hedge funds.