Brynjolfsson Joins James Alpha Advisors

(Bloomberg) -- John Brynjolfsson, after creating an $80 billion asset management business at Pimco and a $1 billion hedge fund on his own, will downsize to a $16 million mutual fund during the next stage of his career.

Brynjolfsson, who is closing his Armored Wolf hedge fund he started after leaving Pimco in 2008, plans to join James Alpha Advisors. He and Tim Alford, a portfolio manager at Armored Wolf, will run the $16.4 million James Alpha Global Enhanced Real Return Fund, James Vitalie, the firm’s chief executive officer, said in an interview.

“We plan and hope to take advantage of John’s talents,” Vitalie said Friday. “There will be more for him to do than just this one mutual fund.”

James Alpha, which was formed to manage the personal wealth of Denis Nayden, a former CEO of General Electric Capital, also runs alternative mutual funds and provides new hedge fundmanagers with seed money. Alternative mutual funds make hedge fund-like strategies available to small investors.

James Alpha provided seed funding to Brynjolfsson when he left Newport Beach, Calif.-based Pimco to start Armored Wolf, Vitalie said. While the real return mutual fund bears the James Alpha name, Armored Wolf has been running it since its inception in 2011, he added.

James Alpha Real Return has generated a 2.9% gain over the past 52 weeks, outperforming 94% of its peers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It has fallen 0.3% during the past month, a performance that ranks among the bottom 10% of funds that follow a similar strategy.

SHORT SABBATICAL

Brynjolfsson said earlier this week that he is closing Armored Wolf, whose assets have dwindled to $222 million as of Oct. 1 amid a bear market for commodities. He will continue to manage his personal wealth and is also asking some existing Armored Wolf clients to transfer their money to James Alpha, Vitalie said.

In a Monday interview, Brynjolfsson said he was planning to take a sabbatical upon winding down Armored Wolf. Vitalie said today that the sabbatical is only going to last several days.

An expert on commodities as well as event-linked catastrophe and inflation-linked bonds, Brynjolfsson spent 19 years at Pimco, where he started and oversaw the firm’s real return fund group. Brynjolfsson brought $80 billion in third- party assets to Pimco while starting and managing its second-, third-, and fourth-largest mutual funds.

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