By Lawrence Delevingne
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Macro hedge fund firm CommonWealth Opportunity Capital GP LLC is shutting down and its leader, Adam Fisher, is set to join Soros Fund Management LLC, where he will help manage money for billionaire George Soros, according to people familiar with the situation.
Lior Kosovski, CommonWealth's general counsel, and Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Soros, declined to comment. The news was first reported by Bloomberg.
Soros made his fortune running his own macroeconomic-focused hedge funds and Fisher will help invest using a similar so-called macro strategy, the sources said. Soros' family office manages about $26 billion and is led by former UBS executive Dawn Fitzpatrick.
Los Angeles-based CommonWealth managed $2.2 billion as of March 31, with leverage, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Its clients include public pensions in West Virginia and San Antonio, Texas--and Fisher's new boss, Soros.
A unit of Brevan Howard Asset Management is a minority owner of CommonWealth, which also serves as an investment advisor to Brevan Howard.
A spokesman for Brevan Howard declined to comment.
The shuttering of CommonWealth comes following a loss of about 2.7 percent this year through mid-July in one of its hedge funds, according to performance information seen by Reuters. Launched in late 2008, the same fund produced average annual returns of nearly 10 percent, according to the same data.
Many macro hedge funds have struggled so far this year. The HFRI Macro Index is down 0.73 percent this year through June and fell 2.4 percent over the last 12 months.
Before Commonwealth, Fisher founded or co-founded Orient Property Group, which invested in Asian real estate, and Irongate Capital Partners, a North and Central American-focused property investment and development firm.