Steve Cohen (businessman)

Steven A. Cohen (born June 11, 1956) is an American hedge fund manager and owner of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball since September 14, 2020, owning roughly 97.2% of the team. He is the founder of hedge fund Point72 Asset Management and now-closed S.A.C. Capital Advisors, both based in Stamford, Connecticut.

In 2013, the Cohen-founded S.A.C. Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to insider trading and agreed to pay $1.8 billion in fines ($900 million in forfeiture and $900 million in fines) in one of the biggest criminal cases against a hedge fund. Cohen was prohibited from managing outside money for two years as part of the settlement reached in the civil case over his accountability for the scandal. The hedge fund agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and four counts of securities fraud and to close to outside investors.

Cohen loosely inspired the character Bobby Axelrod, played by Damian Lewis, on the Showtime series ''Billions''.

Early life and education

Cohen grew up in Great Neck, New York, where his father was a dress manufacturer in Manhattan's garment district, and his mother was a piano teacher. He is the third of seven brothers and sisters. He took a liking to poker as a high school student, often betting his own money in tournaments, and credits the game with teaching him "how to take risks." Cohen graduated from John L. Miller Great Neck North High School in 1974, where he played on the school's soccer team.

Cohen received an economics degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. While in school, Cohen was initiated as a brother of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity's Theta chapter where he served as treasurer. While in school, a friend helped him open a brokerage account with $1,000 of his tuition money.

Investment career

Gruntal & Co. (1978–1992)

In 1978, after graduating from Wharton, Cohen got a Wall Street job as a junior trader in the options arbitrage department at Gruntal & Co. His first day on the job at Gruntal & Co., he made an $8,000 profit. He would eventually go on to make the company around $100,000 a day and eventually managed a $75 million portfolio and six traders. Cohen was running his own trading group at Gruntal & Co. by 1984, and continued running it until he started his own company, SAC in 1992.

Throughout the late 1980s, the Securities and Exchange Commission became suspicious that Cohen had used inside information in December 1985 when he bet that RCA and GE would merge, ahead of the announcement. The SEC called him to testify, but he refused to answer any questions, invoking his right against self-incrimination. Then, the SEC started looking into his other investments from the same period, especially those involving Brett K. Lurie.

S.A.C. Capital Advisors (1992–2016)

In 1992, Cohen started S.A.C. Capital Advisors with $10 million of his own money and another $10 million from outside capital. The company's name 'SAC Capital' derived from Steven A. Cohen's initials.

In 2003, the ''New York Times'' wrote that "SAC is one of the biggest hedge funds and is known for frequent and rapid trading." In 2006, ''The Wall Street Journal'' reported that while Cohen was once a rapid-fire trader who never held trading positions for extended periods of time, he now holds an increasing number of equities for longer periods of time.

As of 2009, the firm managed $14 billion in equity.

Racketeering and insider trading charges

In December 2009, Cohen and his brother Donald T. Cohen were sued by Steven's ex-wife Patricia Cohen for racketeering and insider trading charges. On March 30, 2011, the United States District Court in Lower Manhattan dismissed the case, but on April 3, 2013, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said a lower court had erred in dismissing fraud-based claims by his former spouse and revived the lawsuit. The appeals court also revived claims of racketeering and breach of fiduciary duty while upholding the dismissal of an unjust enrichment claim.

Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Pierre N. Leval said Patricia Cohen had made a "plausible" allegation that Steven Cohen had concealed the $5.5 million during negotiations on a separation agreement in 1989, which preceded the divorce. The revival of the lawsuit comes amid mounting pressure on Steven Cohen over an insider trading investigation that led to the arrest of Michael Steinberg, one of Cohen's closest confidantes at SAC Capital. SAC affiliates reached two civil insider trading settlements totaling nearly $616 million with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SAC neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing in either case.

SEC investigation (2012–2016)

On November 20, 2012, Cohen was implicated in an alleged insider trading scandal involving an ex-SAC manager, Mathew Martoma. The SEC brought charges against a number of other S.A.C. employees from 2010 to 2013 with various outcomes. Martoma was convicted in 2014, in what federal prosecutors billed as the most profitable insider-trading conspiracy in history. The SEC later brought a civil lawsuit against Cohen, alleging his failure to supervise Martoma and Michael Steinberg, who was a senior employee and confidant of Cohen's. Cohen settled his civil case with regulators in January 2016; the agreement with the SEC prohibited Cohen from managing outside money until 2018.

S.A.C. Capital Advisors "pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in 2013 and paid $1.8 billion in penalties" and was required to stop handling investments for outsiders. Cohen "escaped criminal indictment himself despite being the living, breathing heart of S.A.C. Capital," but Dr. Sidney Gilman, the star prosecution witness against Martoma, testified that FBI agents told him that Cohen was the investigation's ultimate target. He was featured in a January 2017 ''The New Yorker'' article titled "When the Feds Went After the Hedge-Fund Legend Steven A. Cohen".

Point72 Ventures (2014–present)

In 2014, Cohen founded Point72 Ventures, "a venture capital fund that makes early-stage investments".

GameStop short squeeze

In January 2021, Cohen's hedge fund Point72 joined Ken Griffin's Citadel in putting $2.75 billion into Melvin Capital, the hedge fund of former Cohen protege Gabe Plotkin, as a result of the GameStop short squeeze. Cohen was criticized by Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy for his role, to which Cohen responded that he was just "trying to make a living" via Twitter; Cohen's behavior in this exchange was subsequently criticized by former New York sports icon Boomer Esiason, who said Cohen's comment "actually makes me sick to my stomach." When asked by a New York Mets fan on Twitter, Cohen denied that his involvement with the short squeeze would have an effect on his willingness to spend money on the team, namely in the ongoing free agent signing period. Cohen deactivated his Twitter account on the evening of January 29, 2021, purportedly an action taken by Cohen himself. Cohen later stated that he stepped away from the platform due to an influx of threats against himself and his family.

Wealth

In 2016, ''Forbes Magazine'' estimated Cohen's fortune at $13 billion, ranking him the 30th richest person in the United States. Cohen was dubbed "the hedge fund king" in a 2006 ''The Wall Street Journal'' article. His 2005 compensation was reportedly $1 billion, considerably higher than his 2001 compensation of $428 million. In February 2015, Forbes listed Cohen as the highest-earning hedge fund manager in 2014. In December 2013, Cohen's New York penthouse in the Bloomberg Tower was listed for sale for $98 million. According to ''Institutional Investor'', Cohen made an estimated $1.7 billion in 2020.

New York Mets

Cohen became a minority owner of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball (MLB) in 2012, with an 8% stake in the baseball team. On August 27, 2020, news sources announced that Cohen had entered into exclusive negotiations with Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz

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