Greg Coffey to retire

Greg Coffey, the star trader at Louis Bacon's hedge fund firm Moore Capital, is to retire after 20 years in the industry, Financial News can reveal.

  Coffey, who is known for his intense approach to trading, wants to leave the hedge fund industry to re-balance his life, a person familiar with the matter told Financial News. He also wants to spend more time in his native Australia.

  Coffey was not immediately available for comment. Moore Capital declined to comment.

   Coffey joined Moore Capital in 2008 from GLG Partners as co-chief investment officer, bringing with him a 12-strong team. He turned down a $250m retention offer from GLG; when he left, his departure sparked large outflows from the firm and a sharp fall in its share price. Then 38, he was estimated to have contributed about half of GLG’s total $679 performance fees in 2007, according to sources.

  He had been expected to set up his own firm but a tough fundraising environment and a chance meeting with Bacon in the Curzon Street car park shared by the firms saw him resurface at Moore Capital in November of 2008. Moore Capital’s offices are just a few floors above GLG’s at One Curzon Street in Mayfair.

  Coffey, who has been dubbed the Wizard of Oz, is a keen skier and has been known in the past to have a trunk of screens and keyboards sent ahead to wherever he and his family choose to ski. The hardware would be assembled to allow him to trade through the night while his wife and children slept.

   Once thought of as a potential successor to Bacon at Moore Capital, Coffey took on the management of the Moore Emerging Markets Fund, which launched in August 2003. In March 2009, Coffey branched out with two new dedicated funds, one an emerging markets equities fund and the other focusing on emerging markets fixed income and currencies.

   Last November, Moore Capital announced that Coffey was stepping down as manager of Moore's emerging markets fund after lacklustre performance, and Bacon was assuming control of it. The fund was down just under 7% for the first 10 months of the year and asset had fallen from about $1.5bn at the start of 2011 to “hundreds of millions,” investors said.

   Coffey set up a new global macro fund, called the GC Macro fund, with almost $750m in capital from Moore. The idea was that he would take more concentrated bets with more risk and greater potential rewards than he was previously able to. Since it launched in November, performance has been flat, the source said.

   Since 2004, Coffey has delivered annualised returns of 22% a year, the source said. In the same period, the S&P500 Index has gained 2.92% a year.