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Ron Pollack: Fund Manager, Family Man, Friend. Ron Pollack: He's back, more extraordinary achievements to come. Ron Pollack: mastering hedge funds, charities and family.

By: Robert D. Thomson

Ron Pollack: He is back, more adventures to come

After a chance meeting with this man, you probably would have no idea that he had organized one of the biggest and most successful hedge funds in America. At its peak, the fund was valued at more than one billion dollars. Ron Pollack sat in his Florida office dressed in Florida casual--shorts and a T-shirt. He told us about his job as a hedge fund manager and short seller. He also shared details about his family, the charities he has been involved it, and the reason for coming out of a 6-year retirement to manage funds again. Ron says that "short selling is what I do and I need to get back to doing it."

Ron Pollack graduated Magna Cum Laude from Yale and went on to get both an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. After graduate school, Pollack went to Wall Street where he became an investment banker and later honed his skills as a hedge fund manager. Ron was trained as a short seller by industry pioneers, the Feshbach Brothers.

Yale and Harvard are both successful in turning out successful investors. For example, Jim Chanos exposed Enron as a fraud and Ron met him in the 1980s when they both worked for First Executive Live. Zoe Cruz is a commodity trader and was the vice president of Morgan Stanley, and also a colleague of Ron's at HBS. Jamie Dinan was another successful investor. He is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase and used to play pick-up basketball with Ron when they worked together. Strauss Zelnick was the chairman of ZelnickMedia and Take-Two interactive, as well as Ron's roommate while they attended Harvard. Scott Schoen and Scott Sperling were co-presidents of THL and also friends of Ron's from Harvard. Steve Pagliuca and John Bekenstein, who worked for Bain Capital, were Ron's friends from HBS and Yale, respectively. Glenn Hutchins was also a Harvard classmate. Pollack, who is a graduate of both Yale and Harvard, is a usual example. When he left Feshbach in the early 1990's, he built successful hedge funds. The most famous of those funds was his short fund named Dancing Bear. Near the end of 2001, Pollack felt a burning need to spend more time with family and helping charities.

Pollack states that post 9/11 he was deeply moved by what transpired that day and had a burning desire to help. Months afterward, as the financial markets were in chaos, Ron felt the first tugs of competing loyalties between his investment firm and his young family's needs. That November, as Ron vacationed with his pregnant wife and their three kids, he found himself in his hotel room, laptop in hand, watching the markets. It was at that point that he informed his wife he needed to return to work because the markets were becoming unhinged.

During the return trip he hatched a plan to give him more time to spend with his family and help out charities of his choice. In 2002 Ron merged his hedge fun business into the Monitor Group in Massachusetts to give him more free time for pursuing outside interests such as volunteering and parenting his children. He was able to efficiently organize fundraisers for ill fire fighting personnel, police officers, and those in public service in New York. He did this with the help of the Vail Valley Foundation, the New York Rescue Workers Detox Foundation, and other groups.

While volunteering his time and fund raising for his chosen charities, Pollack would sometimes find himself visiting his peers in fund management offices. This pulled on him emotionally as he had retired and become a volunteer. During this time, he traded but once.

{{{At a charity auction in Vail, Pollack had bid for a day of trading and instruction with a local stockbroker, "just for fun." Little did this broker know who had won the bid. Needless to say, he was shocked to find out the depth of knowledge that his visitor had. Within the first 15 minutes, Pollack had completed a successful short sale and knew that he "still had it."|At a charity auction in Vail, Colorado, Pollack, out of humor, was found bidding on a day of trading and instruction from a local stock broker. The broker had no idea who had won the bid. Soon after, he was shocked to find out the vast knowledge and experience his visitor had. Within a short while, Pollack had once again done a successful short sale and knew he was still "the man"|For a bit of personal entertainment, Pollack treated himself to a day of 'personal training' and trading with a local stockbroker, which he won at a charity auction in Vail. It was a major surprise for this stockbroker when he discovered who his trainee was going to be and even more of a surprise when he realized quite how much Ron knew about the markets. It took Pollack just 15 minutes to triumph and a successful short sale trade. He then knew that he had not lost his touch.|While at a charity auction, Pollack jokingly bid on a day

Article Source: http://www.articlecamp.com

Ron Pollack is a veteran hedge fund manager and short-seller. He was the founder and Investment Manager of Bulldog Capital Management, which merged into the Monitor Group, a large global consulting and investment management company.

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