Background: Speaking of Bill Browder

I’ve known Bill Browder for a while as an investor.  He runs two Funds out of London now (the Hermitage Russia and Hermitage Global funds) but he used to have just one, run out of Moscow.  He started the Russia Fund, a deep value activist investor equity fund, around 1997 with USD 20 million or so (with I think half from Edmond Safra). The Fund promptly lost more than 90% in the ’98 crisis but Bill persevered and ended up doing spectacularly well.  Activist investing in Russia was really dangerous then, one target of Bill’s actually threatening to kill him in public.

Three Trap and Finance

I think there is a very good reason why people in finance, especially traders, investment managers, et al are so arrogant.  Theirs is one of the few professions with immediate validation of whether their idea is right or wrong:  it either makes money or loses it.