
Friends and competition
Old-man talk and gossip
In 2006 at the age of 34 I had been in hedge funds for almost a
decade and run my own firm for half that time. I was still too young
to be a veteran, but because of all the new arrivals from the industry’s
explosive growth I felt like an old-timer. I found myself making ‘old-
man comments’ like ‘Back in 1999 the merger arbitrage spreads were
so wide you could drive a truck through them’ (i.e. the spread between
the eventual consideration received in a merger or takeover and the
current price of a stock was very large), and generally made remarks
to the effect that all these new people ...