Ex-SSARIS leaders re-emerge as Ridgedale Advisors

State Street Global Advisors sold a majority stake in its hedge fund unit SSARIS Advisors to the unit's senior management at the end of 2014, and alternative fund manager Investcorp acquired its hedge fund of fund business unit a year later. But in 2016, SSARIS had to close its doors following heavy redemptions.

CIO Paul Lucek and CEO Mark Rosenberg, two veteran investors who had been at SSARIS for over ten years, then started receiving calls from former clients.

"When we wound down SSARIS and returned client capital, many clients said they were interested in continuing to work with us," Lucek explains to Opalesque.

"The truth is our investment philosophy had been successful for them, and it would have been easier to wind down if we were under performing but we weren't. I began discussions with Peter Gorman and other former SSARIS individuals who wanted to resume our work and we found some external investors that were interested in providing some working capital for our new firm."

So they launched Ridgedale Advisors in Rye, New York, in June 2017.

"Almost all of our clients were in fund vehicles sponsored by our majority owner for which we served as a sub-advisor," Rosenberg adds. "The sub-advisory role did not continue after our separation. Our Hedge Fund of Funds group was sold to Investcorp, and after spending out about a year on the sidelines, Paul Lucek gave me a call with Peter Gorman to discuss the case for starting up again, particularly given the positive response we had from our former investors. We had consistent winning records, with mitigated downside performance and low correlations across our internally managed strategies and wanted to bring those investment programs back to the clients. We all felt the mark......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.