Steven Cohen
The man is called "Stevie," as if he were everybody's favorite soul singer or the neighborhood paperboy, yet he could very well be the richest trader who ever laid down a position. Either way, Steven Cohen is certainly among the most admired living financial figures, second only perhaps to Alan Greenspan (who might end up working for Cohen, at the rate Cohen gobbles up market studs).
Says one former SAC staffer: "Stevie has the most clout on the Street, the best contacts, an army of analysts and unlimited capital." A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School who got started in the late 1970s as a proprietary trader at Gruntal & Co., Cohen launched SAC in 1992 with $20 million. He has since amassed more than $7 billion that he personally runs -- not to mention 500 or so traders, analysts and support staff, creating an asset-management empire that spans two management companies (SAC Capital Advisors and SAC Capital Management), three main funds (SAC Capital Associates, SAC Capital International and SAC Global Diversified), two separate offices in Stamford and additional outposts in Manhattan, London and San Francisco. When Cohen comes upon a trader with exceptional skills, he'll seed him in-house -- or help put him in business on his own.
The SAC family had another impressive year in 2005 -- performance, for the most part, was 20 percent–plus, as it has been, amazingly, just about every year since Cohen began. With his incentive fee of up to 50 percent of total profits (though his newest fund, the SAC Multi-Strategy, is said to be 3-and-35, and we hear the rest of his vehicles going forward will follow suit), perhaps only a federal mint prints more money year in, year out than Cohen. Had it not been for an anomalous rough patch this past October (his only down month), his epic compensation amount might have been even greater. We figure the SAC empire took in revenues of at least $3 billion last year -- and if Steven Cohen, conservatively, took one-third...