By Irwin Speizer
Photographs by Mackenzie Stroh
Nearly four years ago, Ross Margolies suddenly found himself out of work, having just shut down his hedge fund business, Saranac Capital Management, before it ever really got off the ground. Margolies had planned to spin out Saranac, a group he had been managing at Citigroup, but he got sideswiped by an internal scandal in the bank's Japanese operation that touched off a redemption run just as he was getting under way. Saranac's swift demise left the then 48-year-old wondering how his long career on Wall Street had so suddenly jumped the tracks—and whether he would be able to get it back on again.
"I was emotionally drained," Margolies says of the experience, which tarnished an otherwise stellar reputation. Margolies had distinguished himself as a top-rated mutual fund stock picker and portfolio manager before building what became a $3.2 billion multistrategy and...