Mutual Fund Player Turned Hedge Fund Back Home

Date: Monday, February 23, 2009
Author: Christopher Glynn, Hedgefund.net

A mutual fund VIP who set out for the hedge fund frontier has returned to his first love.

Junk bond trader David Glancy left a sweet gig at Fidelity Investments in 2003 to roll out Andover Capital, a hedge fund that invested equity as well as the bond market. But he closed the fund in 2008, and on Thursday Putnam Investments announced Glancy has come onboard as a portfolio manager.

“This is familiar territory for David,” said Robert Reynolds, chief executive officer of the Boston mutual fund company, in a statement.

In signing on with Putnam, a $100 billion operation, Glancy, 47, is returning to the tight-knit community that acted as a hotbed of investment talent during the mutual fund boom of the 1990s. Aside from Putnam and Fidelity, Beantown boasted The Boston Co., Eaton Vance, Liberty Mutual, MFS Investment Management, SSgA and Wellington Management to name the largest.

But after the dot-com bubble burst, the mutual fund industry lost its luster and top talent like Glancy entered the high-fee business of managing a hedge fund.

Andover Capital failed to break out as a startup. The fund never managed more than $300 million and held half that sum at its close. In 2007, it lost 6%.