Michael Steinhardt

About Michael Steinhardt

Michael H. Steinhardt (born December 7, 1940(1940-12-07) in Brooklyn, New York) is an American businessman and philanthropist active in Jewish causes. He was one of the first prominent hedge fund managers. He founded Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co., a hedge fund, in 1967.

Steinhardt averaged an annualized return for his clients of 24.5%, after a 1% management fee and a "performance fee" of 15% (early in his career, later 20%) of all annual gains, realized and unrealized, nearly triple the annualized performance of the S & P 500 index over the same timeframe.

Prior to Steinhardt's and his partners' starting their eponymous hedge fund during the summer of 1967, Steinhardt was an analyst at Loeb, Rhodes & Co. (now part of Citigroup, following a convoluted chain of mergers and spinoffs). At Loeb Rhodes, Steinhardt followed the conglomerate industry, which included companies such as Automatic Sprinkler (now defunct), City Investing (also defunct), and the best-known conglomerate of its day, Gulf & Western (now part of Viacom and Viacom's spinoff CBS). Again, according to his autobiography, he met his future wife in a car pool he organized (in early 1967). During the course of the drive to downtown NYC he mentioned the name of a company, Colorado Milling, a leading operator of grain elevators. Colorado Milling was acquired in 1968 by Great Western Sugar, a beet sugar refiner turned conglomerate which had previously acquired Shakey's, a major pizza chain (the merged company was renamed Great Western United). The future Mrs. Steinhardt, who didn't know Michael Steinhardt at the time, mentioned Colorado Milling to her father, who invested in the company, making a substantial profit, part of which was used to buy his daughter -- the future Mrs. Michael Steinhardt -- her first fur coat.