Steve Cohen had about $90 billion of market bets outstanding at the beginning of this year, indicating his Point72 Asset Management was using large amounts of leverage as the firm prepared for outside investors.
The firm’s regulatory assets, a calculation required by the Securities and Exchange Commission, reflect as much as $8 of leverage for each dollar of capital, according to documents filed Jan. 6 with the agency. That is more than double the leverage Cohen reported using at his previous hedge fund firm, SAC Capital Advisors, at the end of 2013.
The following year, the billionaire manager returned money to clients and changed SAC’s name to Point72, to help settle a seven-year insider trading investigation. He was barred from managing outside capital after SAC pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 2013 and paid a record $1.8 billion fine. Cohen, who wasn’t charged with any wrongdoing, began managing his personal fortune through the new family office, Point72.
With Cohen’s two-year ban expiring on Jan. 1, Point72 became a registered money manager this month. The change from a family office was made through a merger with Stamford Harbor Capital, another advisory firm Cohen had set up in 2016 to explore raising outside money once again.
In its SEC registration, Point72 reported that as of Jan. 1 it had $90.4 billion of regulatory assets. That figure incorporates the use of borrowed money, options, short sales and other derivatives that employ leverage to enhance returns. Without that, Point72’s net assets — the bulk of which is Cohen’s personal capital — total roughly $11 billion, according to the firm’s website.
By comparison at the end of 2013, Cohen’s former hedge fund SAC Capital had $14 billion of net assets and, according to regulatory filings, regulatory assets totalling $50.9 billion. That represents a leverage ratio of about 3.6 to 1.