FrontPoint continues its plan to expand its multistrategy fund, grabbing four employees, including the founder, from Rockbay Capital.
Morgan Stanley’s $7 billion FrontPoint Partners has hired several senior executives from Rockbay Capital Management, an event driven and special situations hedge fund firm, as part of its plan to expand its multistrategy fund. Rockbay, founded in 2002 by former Och-Ziff Capital Management partner Atul Khanna, is in the process of liquidating its Rockbay Capital Commitment Master Fund, according to a former employee.
Khanna, will head up the event-driven and special situations strategy within FrontPoint’s $2.6 billion FrontPoint Multistrategy Fund. He is joined by Rockbay chief operating officer and head of trading Matt Fischer, and analysts Jeff Monat and Tarigh Yusufi. Fischer’s new title is trader while Monat and Yusufi remain analysts.
Before founding Rockbay, Khanna was a partner at Och-Ziff, where he focused on the firm’s investments in the technology and communications sectors. Rockbay began liquidating its fund the week of February 15. Terms of the liquidation could not be ascertained, nor could Rockbay’s returns or assets under management. Last year, the firm employed 8 people. Founder Atul Khanna did not return calls or an email seeking comment. A spokeswoman for FrontPoint declined to comment.
Direct lending strategy
Separately, FrontPoint hired Stephen Czech to head up a new direct lending strategy, which may be run as a standalone strategy but could be managed within the FrontPoint Multistrategy fund, depending on whether the firm wants to include the less liquid strategy in the fund.
Czech was most recently a managing director and portfolio manager at Gottex Fund Management, where he focused on direct-lending opportunities. Previously he founded Contrarian Capital Finance, a middle market-focused direct-lending fund. Joining Czech at FrontPoint as associate portfolio managers are Gottex executives Mark Newlun and Paul Ahrens, and Sze Ling Wan of GE Capital.
FrontPoint plans to roll out five new strategies within its FrontPoint Multistrategy Fund. In addition to the event-driven and direct lending strategies, it will also launch a global statistical arbitrage, an Australian long/short and emerging markets macro strategies, as first reported in AR.
—Suzy Kenly