Bill Lipschutz - Career

Career

During a Salomon Brothers training program Lipschutz was pulled aside and asked to be a part of the newly formed Foreign Exchange (or forex trading or FX for short) Department. Salomon Brothers created a team of their brightest traders, came up with a workable plan for learning currency trading and hit the market running.

The foreign exchange markets took off about the same time Salomon Brothers were jumping into the market. Lipschutz became a powerhouse with the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, where the majority of forex trading took place. At the peak of his career, Lipschutz had 50% of all the currency option volume on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and 80% of all open interest option. He was considered to be amongst the top five of all forex traders worldwide. By 1985, Lipschutz was pulling in $300 million per year for Salomon Brothers.

Lipschutz was the principal trader for Salomon Brothers’ proprietary foreign exchange account from 1984 until he left in June 1990. In 1988, he was appointed a Director of Salomon Brothers, heading the Global Foreign Exchange Options Group and the New York Foreign Exchange Trading Desk. In 1989 he was named the Managing Director and Global Head of Foreign Exchange.

Despite his enormous successes, Lipschutz left Salomon Brothers. He felt they were becoming too large and were losing their appeal as a cultural institution. He opted for early retirement. His retirement did not last long. Currency trading was becoming bigger and more profitable than bonds or stocks, and Lipschutz took it on.

Briefly in 1990 Lipschutz went to work as the President and CEO for the North Tower Group, a subsidiary of the Merrill Lynch Corporation. Then in 1991 he founded Rowayton Capital Management, an asset and management firm where he was the President and CEO until 1995.

In 1995, with former Cornell classmates Lipschutz formed Hathersage, a currency hedge fund manager company where he is the Principal and Director of Portfolio Management. The company, a $200 million dollar company, manages only fourteen investors. It is run out of his home, and the homes of several of his employees. Together with his friends, and his wife, there are seven employees total. Each has a very specific role in the company and its day to day operations to make it successful.

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