19 SUNDAY MAIL • October 28, 2012
Lifestyle
At just 41, Greg Coffey has quit hedge funding with £450m in the bank. But will retirement suit him? Simon English on the master of the universe who just wants to play a little cricket
E
ARLY one evening not too long ago Greg Coffey was trading markets across the world from three mobile phones entirely as normal - and also doing something else entirely normal for other people that he himself never found time for: bathing one of his three young children. Something, somewhere happened. An interest rate was suddenly raised or a stock index went crazy-go-nuts or a politician said something stupid. The lines went berserk and while juggling the four things in his hands, one of the phones fell into the bath. The trade was lost. The child confused. This may not be the precise point at which Coffey, an Australian hedge-fund hero the Wizard of Oz to his fans - decided to chuck it all in. But it was a moment. Really, what was he still doing here? He had seriously begun to wonder whether it was worth it; whether he wanted a different life. Whether he had enough and had had enough. If, from the outside, his life looked absurdly glamorous good looks, mansions across the globe - he was no longer happy. Friends claim he had been heard to say lately that he really wanted to take his kids to school once in a while. They raised eyebrows, but assumed he wasn’t serious. Last week Coffey stunned the City and his army of admirers in London when he suddenly quit trading altogether, at the age of 41 and with a fortune of about £450 million. If you think that sounds like a fine plan, or think you would probably have walked away far sooner, that’s part of the reason why you don’t have £450 million. While people who know him well insist he comes over as a remarkably normal bloke in person, there’s no question he was obsessive and compulsive, and had been for 20 years. A typical day for Coffey would begin at his Kensington home, which he shares with his wife Ania, a former financial analyst, and their children, at 5 or 6am as he readied himself for the beginning of London trading at 8am. Once on top of things, he would make the 20-minute dash to his offices in the heart of hedge-fund land and home to his employer, Moore Capital. Those 20 minutes were always a worry. Something might happen while he was under a bridge and without mobile phone reception. He might lose money or miss a chance to make some. For that reason he didn’t like the Tube. He didn’t like planes. He didn’t like how long the ride in the lift took… Coffey and his team would then trade throughout the day. If it could be bought or sold, the Actuarial Sciences grad had a view on what the right price was. If it was trading too high, he’d short it (bet it would fall). If it was cheap, he’d buy. Coffey would be adjusting his positions on a 24-hour basis, trading through until 9pm when the US market closes. That would be the right moment for that race home, back to the trading floor he had set up in his own house, ready for when Hong Kong and Singapore opened at 11 or 12am London time. From that point on, his New
seen this before. “In a way, his retirement is remarkably similar to the retirement of Roger Guy in his forties from Gartmore in 2010 after 17 years of fund management. Running a hedge fund is not easy and incredibly stressful. I managed one for nine years and the only time I relaxed was when I was on a plane where there is no mobile reception.” He adds: “There is also a more fundamental factor causing so many high profile players to retire - in the modern age of information speed and availability, the ‘edge’ of the star fund manager is increasingly being removed. In the old days good fund managers could gain information before their competitors by shrewd analysis and intelligent questioning. Now everyone receives information at the same time and the largefund manager has the disadvantage of extra costs.” Harry Hedge Fund may have had his chips, in other words. Nothing about Coffey had
If you think that £450 million sounds like a fine plan, or think you would probably have walked away far sooner, that’s part of the reason why you don’t have £450 million
Trading places York desk would monitor moves in America and in the Far East markets. He would be called, would expect to be called, in the middle of the night if anything at all was moving notably. Knowing his will, staff pondering whether to wake the boss usually decided it was better to call than not. When Coffey suddenly announced his retirement, saying only that he wanted to spend more time with his family, some sniped. He’d lost his nerve. The trading game had changed and left
him behind. He was being outpaced - outthought! - by computers trading automatically. He wasn’t a wizard, he was a dinosaur. There’s no disputing that his performance was no longer what it had been. Clients had pulled hundreds of millions out of his funds as a previously invincible track record began to look merely adequate. Some say superstar traders always fall to earth in the end. Alan Miller, a senior City fund manager who runs his own firm, SCM Private, says he’s
suggested he would join the quitters. He had made most money working for GLG Partners, in 2008 being offered a now legendary $250 million “golden handcuffs” deal tying him to the firm. He turned it down, and was assumed to be planning to set up his own fund. For now, Coffey isn’t allowed to speak for himself due to the exit terms agreed with Moore Capital, an extremely private firm that doesn’t like to talk about itself or anything else much. He is said to still be in London, though plans to spend more time in Australia, where he was born, and Scotland, where he recently bought the Ardfin Estate - 12,000 acres on the island of Jura that is said to be good for hunting red deer. He loves cricket and might do more work for a charity foundation set up by former Australian cricketer Steve Waugh. Some say such characters can never truly walk away for long. They always want to have another go, to prove to everyone that they have still got it. Perhaps Coffey is different. One man who knows him well said: “Maybe in six months he will be bored out of his brains and itching to get back in the game. I don’t think so though. I think that’s it.”