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| “We decided that we wanted Hathersage to stay small, geographically flexible and extremely focused. Each person’s role is very specific and each person is very experienced and very good at what they do” Bill Lipschutz |
“ONCE A DEALER, always a dealer”, was once the motto of the Association Cambiste Internationale, the international society of foreign exchange dealers headquartered in Paris. For Bill Lipschutz, principal and director of portfolio management for currency hedge fund company Hathersage, nothing could be truer. Lipschutz joined Salomon Brothers as a newly graduated MBA in 1982 when foreign exchange trading was the realm of commercial banks, and in just six years he built an unparalleled FX trading business at the investment bank. By the mid-1980s Salomon held more than 50% of the FX option open interest (outstanding open contracts) and accounted for 50% of the daily FX option trading volume on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, at that time the premier marketplace for FX options trading. By the end of the 1980s, Salomon was making as much money with 21 traders worldwide as Citibank was with 70 dealing rooms, and Lipschutz was regarded as one of the world’s top-five FX traders.
