The hedge fund industry honored its most admired managers and investors last night (Wednesday night) in New York at Alternative Investment News’ Hedge Fund Industry Awards.  The event was a great success – even though Alpha Male lost out on the charity-auction bidding for a $8,500 Friday afternoon helicopter trip from Midtown to the Hamptons.  To add fuel to the bidding on that one, MC David Moore (the ”world’s funniest CEO”) promised that the pilot would fly low over the heavily congested I-495 so “you can give the drivers the finger”.  While that did sound enticing, I promised my wife I would bail out if the bidding surpassed 85 bucks.

In any event, this was a tough assignment, but someone had to do it.  Here is what I have to show for it…

Industry (finally) recognizes Phillip Goldstein for “breaking” the SEC

Controversial hedge fund manager, Phillip Goldstein of Bulldog Investors, was honored last night by the hedge fund community as “Hedge Fund Leader of the Year”.  You may recognize his name as the man who challenged and beat the SEC in its attempt to regulate the hedge fund industry.

While this recognition seems to make perfect sense on the surface, it actually represents somewhat of a change of heart for an industry that was initially slow to line up behind Goldstein’s court challenge.  As Alpha Magazine reported in its July/August 2006 edition:

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