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Steven A. Cohen (born circa 1956), is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and the founder and manager of SAC Capital Partners, a Stamford, Connecticut-based hedge fund that focuses mostly on equity market strategies. Cohen lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, with his wife and children. ^[1].

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Wall Street fame 3 Wealth 4 Politics 5 Art collector 6 References 7 Footnotes 8 External links

[edit] Early life and education

Cohen grew up in Great Neck, New York, and he attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. After Wharton, Cohen got a Wall Street job as a junior trader in the options arbitrage department at Gruntal & Co. in 1978. On his first day on the job, he made an $8,000 profit, and eventually was making around $100,000 a day for the company.^{[citation needed]} Cohen was running his own trading group at Gruntal by 1984, and continued running it until he started his own company, SAC.^[2] Cohen started SAC with $25 million in 1992; today the firm controls $12 billion in equity ^[3].

[edit] Wall Street fame

In 1999, Cohen granted one of his first on-the record interviews to Daniel Strachman for his book Getting Started In Hedge Funds (Wiley 2000) ^[4] In March 2005, the New York Times referred to Cohen as "A New Prince of Wall Street" ^[5]. In 2006 Cohen granted a rare interview to the Wall Street Journal; the article's title referred to him as "the hedge fund king" ^[6].

[edit] Wealth

With a fortune estimated by Forbes at $8 billion, Cohen is the 36th richest American^[7]. His $15 million house is 35,000 square feet (3,300 m²) and sits on 14 acres (57,000 m²) in Greenwich, Connecticut.^[8] His 2005 compensation was reportedly $1 billion ^[9], considerably higher than his 2004 compensation ($450 million) ^[10], 2001 compensation ($428 million)^[2], and 2003 compensation ($350 million) ^[11]. In addition, Cohen owns 7% of search engine Baidu ^[12].

[edit] Politics

Cohen and his wife donated a total of $57,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2007, according to opensecrets.org.

[edit] Art collector

Cohen began collecting art in 2000, and over the past several years has become a prominent collector, appearing on Art News magazine's "Top 10" list of biggest-spending art collectors around the world each year since 2002,^[13] and Forbes magazine's "Top Billionaire Art Collectors" list in 2005.^[14] To date, Cohen has bought around $700 million worth of artwork [8]; in 2003, the New York Times reported that in a 5 year period, Cohen spent 20% of his income at art auctions [9]. He is reportedly building a private museum for some of his artwork on his Greenwich property [10]. In the winter of 2005 it became known that in 1999 Cohen had bought Edvard Munch's "Madonna". Reportedly this was for $11.5 million, a record price for any Munch painting to this date.

His tastes in collecting changed "quickly" from Impressionist painters to contemporary art. He also collects 'trophy' art—signature works by famous artists^[14][15]—including a Pollock "drip" painting from David Geffen for $52 million and Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a piece that the artist had bought back from Charles Saatchi for $8 million. In the last two years, he reportedly paid $25 million each for a Warhol and a Picasso. He is a top patron of the Marianne Boesky art gallery.

In 2006, Cohen remarked that repairing his suspended shark artwork, a cost estimated to be a minimum of $100,000, was an "inconsequential" expense. Since the shark itself is over 10 years old, it has begun to rot and requires replacement. [11] The replacement shark has already been caught [12]; once the exhibit is fixed, Cohen will have it moved into his SAC office [13]. Cohen has also placed a head sculpture made of frozen blood entitled Self in the SAC lobby [14].

In addition, in 2006 Cohen bought a landscape entitled "Police Gazette” by artist Willem de Kooning for $63.5 million from David Geffen [15]. Also in 2006, Cohen attempted to make the most expensive art purchase in history when he offered to purchase Picasso's Le Reve from casino mogul Steve Wynn for $139 million. Just days before the painting was to be transported to Mr. Cohen, Mr. Wynn, who suffers from poor vision, accidentally thrust his elbow through the painting while showing it to a group of acquaintances inside of his office at Wynn Las Vegas. The purchase was cancelled, and Mr. Wynn still holds the painting. Nora Ephron has written an eyewitness account.^[16] In November 2006, Cohen purchased another Willem de Kooning painting, Woman III, from David Geffen for $137.5 million [16].

[edit] References

• The TIME 100
• BusinessWeek article
• CBS news and photo of Steven
• Article

www.artmajeur.com/?go=artworks/list_artworks&list_artist_id=103741&list_image_id= - 33k -

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

• An art shark on the trading floor
• New York Metro article on Cohen
• A New Prince of Wall Street Buys Up Art New York Times article profiles Steven Cohen's art collection
• # 287 ($3.0 billion) - 2007 World's Richest People