However, they rebounded with a 62% return in 2009. It was leveraged 7:1 and the biggest funds at Citadel finished 2008 down 55%. At the peak of the crisis, the firm was losing "hundreds of millions of dollars each week". ĭuring the financial crisis of 2007-2008, for 10 months, Griffin barred his investors from withdrawing money, attracting criticism. In 2006, Citadel acquired the positions of Amaranth Advisors at a steep discount. Ken lost 20% of his investment in the fund.
The fund was also seeded with money from Julian Robertson. įrom the time of his marriage in 2003 until late 2009, Griffin was the lead investor in Aragon Global Management, a hedge fund run by his then-wife Anne Dias-Griffin. In 2003, aged 34, Griffin was the youngest self-made individual on the Forbes 400 with an estimated net worth of $650 million. In the early 2000s, Griffin founded market maker Citadel Securities. Ī year later, in 1990, Griffin founded Citadel LLC, with assets under management of $4.6 million, aided by contributions from Meyer. Meyer allotted $1 million of Glenwood capital for Griffin to trade and Griffin made 70% in a year. CareerĪfter graduating in 1989, Griffin moved to Chicago to work with Frank Meyer, founder of Glenwood Capital Investments. Griffin graduated in 1989 with a degree in economics. The fund launched in time to profit from short positions on Black Monday (1987). His first fund launched in 1987 with $265,000, days after his 19th birthday. O’Connor, the manager of convertible bonds at Merrill Lynch in Boston, to open a brokerage account for him with $100,000 that Griffin had gotten from his grandmother, his dentist, and others.
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Despite a ban on running businesses from campus, Griffin convinced school administrators to allow him to install a satellite dish on the roof of the Cabot House dormitory to receive stock quotes. He also invested in convertible arbitrage opportunities in convertible bonds. That year, one of his first investments was to buy put options on Home Shopping Network, making a $5,000 profit. Griffin started at Harvard College in the fall of 1986. In a 1986 article in the Sun-Sentinel, Griffin stated that he thought he would become a businessman or lawyer and that he believed the job market for computer programmers would significantly decrease over the coming decade.
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In high school, Griffin ran a discount mail-order education software firm out of his bedroom called EDCOM. He went to middle school in Boca Raton followed by Boca Raton Community High School, where he was the president of the math club.
Griffin grew up in Boca Raton, Florida, with some time in Texas, and Wisconsin. Griffin's grandmother, Genevieve Huebsch Gratz, inherited an oil business, three farms, and a seed business.
Griffin's father had various jobs, and was a project manager for General Electric. Griffin was born in 1968 in Daytona Beach, Florida, the son of a building supplies executive.