Eisman's Former FrontPoint Team To Go It Alone

Former FrontPoint Partners star trader Steven Eisman's right-hand men are launching a hedge fund without their former boss.

Danny Moses, Porter Collins and Vincent Daniel have founded Seawolf Capital in New York. The new firm will open its doors next month and plans to launch its maiden hedge fund in January.

The three men have worked with Eisman since 2006 and were widely expected to join him at his own new hedge fund after Eisman left FrontPoint in June. It's unclear why the two sides decided to split, Hedge Fund Alert Reports, although there's plenty of speculation. One source suggested that Moses, Collins and Daniel were uncomfortable with Eisman's increasingly public persona, while another hedge fund manager posited that "both feel they can do well without the other, and both feel the other held them back for the last couple of years."

Seawolf will run a financials strategy. It is expected to launch with between $150 million and $200 million—$30 million to $40 million of which will be the principals' capital—and will stop fundraising once the fund has hit $500 million in assets.

In addition to Moses, Eisman's former head trader, Collins and Daniel, former analysts, Seawolf features former FrontPoint executive director for portfolio finance Ed Fasano, who will be the new firm's CFO.

All five men were left looking for work after FrontPoint, rocked by an insider-trading scandal, elected to liquidate Eisman's two funds; the firm said it would shutter all but four of its funds in June, and following a spin-off and fund sale, the once-$7 billion firm will be left with just two funds.