By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
BOSTON (Reuters) - SkyBridge Capital, the hedge fund investment firm founded by Anthony Scaramucci, will sell a majority of itself to RON Transatlantic EG and HNA Capital, the company said on Tuesday, four days after Scaramucci took a position in President-elect Donald Trump's administration.
The $12-billion firm's investment management team, lead by Ray Nolte, will continue to run the company, offering clients access to hedge funds such as Daniel Loeb's Third Point, Michael Vranos' Ellington Management Group and Steven Tananbaum's GoldenTree Asset Management LP.
Scaramucci, who founded SkyBridge in 2005 and joined forces with Nolte five years later when he bought Citigroup (NYSE:C) Alternative Investments Hedge Fund Management Group, will no longer be affiliated with the firm or its well-known industry conference, the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference.
Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Scaramucci announced the sale, without disclosing the buyer, while attending the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
HNA Capital (U.S.) is a unit of Chinese firm HNA Capital and RON Transatlantic already owned a minority stake in SkyBridge. Between the two, the new majority owners are involved in beer brewing, tourism, logistics and financial services.
"Now, together with the world-class resources and networks of HNA and Transatlantic, we feel the 'sky' is the limit for how far we can take SkyBridge," George Hornig, Chief Executive of RON Transatlantic Financial Holdings said in a news release.
Known on Wall Street as the "Mooch," Scaramucci announced on Friday that he would be joining the White House staff as an adviser and public liaison to government agencies and businesses. Word spread among bankers in mid-December that he had put the company up for sale as he was setting his sights on a position in Washington.
The conference, called SALT, grew into one of the industry's biggest hedge fund conferences as Scaramucci got former U.S. presidents, generals and money managers, along with thousands of others to join him for days of lectures and sunning by the pool in Las Vegas.
The conference will be spun off as a standalone entity, the company said.
