Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
March 27, 2014 at 09:20 PM
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, has kicked off a drive to raise funds for a planned $2 billion global hedge fund to be run by the firm he joined last November.
The last big headlines he made were in a decidedly different direction: for sexual assault allegations by a hotel chambermaid in New York, which caused him to resign from his post at the IMF, and for an upcoming trial on “aggravated pimping” charges stemming from parties with prostitutes in Lille, France. However, DSK, as he is generally referred to, has moved on into a new professional phase in his career.
Late last year he joined Luxembourg investment management firm Anatevka (the name is better known in the U.S. as that of the shtetl in which Tevye lives in the musical Fiddler on the Roof) as chairman of the board. The firm then rebranded itself as LSK & Partners, after the initials of its founder Thierry Leyne and Strauss-Kahn. It hopes to capitalize on DSK’s familiarity with the movers and shakers in global government and finance.
DSK is now on the move, seeking investments for the proposed fund, beginning in China, where he hopes to coax investments from institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals. He and his daughter, Vanessa Strauss-Kahn, who is an economist, will manage the fund. DSK has no money management experience and thus no track record, something many institutional investors require before considering investing with a money manager.
While DSK may have no experience managing funds, Leyne, a civil engineer and a member of SFAF, the French Society of Financial Analysts, has a long history of involvement with investment companies. In 1994 he founded Assya Capital, and in 1996 followed that with Axfin. He and the other founding partners of Axfin brought it just a few years later into the German group Consors Discounts Broker AG.
In 2010, Assya Capital and Global Equities Capital Markets merged to become Assya Compagnie Financière, and Anatevka—now LSK & Partners—was created and became active in private wealth management.
Mohamad Zeidan, the firm’s chief operating officer, said in a Shanghai interview about DSK’s presence in China that “China plays and will play a predominant role in this fund.” Once the fund has received regulatory approval from Luxembourg, it will be able to officially raise money. Zeidan said, “We have met with the largest groups in each sector and I’m talking to the financial sector, insurance companies, bankers, financial groups, private and public.”
