(Bloomberg) — Hedge fund veteran Anne Dias is planning to manage outside money again.
Dias, 50, began fundraising last month for a long-short strategy to be managed by her Aragon Global Management. The New York-based firm, with roots dating back two decades, has been operating as a family office for her personal wealth in recent years.
Aragon, which invests in internet, technology and consumer stocks, also seeks companies with “improving long-term business prospects at attractive valuations,” the firm said in a May regulatory filing. It tries to identify mega-trends that will result in “disruptive innovation” over three to five years, creating value for some companies and destroying it for others. It will buy shares of the former and sell short the latter.
Chris Chung, Aragon’s chief financial officer, declined to comment and said Dias wasn’t available.
Dias’s career has taken several turns since she started out at as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. She subsequently worked as a portfolio manager for industry heavyweights including George Soros and Andreas Halvorsen before starting her own firm in 2001 with seeding from another billionaire, Julian Robertson.
Just two years later, Dias, a native of France, was married to Citadel founder Ken Griffin. She decided to return Aragon’s client money about a decade ago.
Griffin filed for divorce in 2014 and the couple reached a settlement a year later. Dias continued her philanthropic pursuits and began teaching a course at Georgetown University, her alma mater, on how to manage a hedge fund.
Dias has been running her current long-short strategy, using her own capital since 2017, according to a person familiar with the firm. By 2019, she had reportedly begun considering raising outside money.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until May that Aragon filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to become a registered money manager, a status that permits the firm to accept outside capital. The registration took effect in June, when Aragon Partners, the onshore version of the long-short fund, also began raising money.
The firm reported about $120 million of gross assets under management, including Dias’s own money, as of late May. In addition to Aragon Partners, the firm runs several funds that invest with third party managers. Those fund-of-funds are closed to new investors.
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