Kenny G's Ambition

I can't fault him for the way he's thinking. Making enough new money to become old money in your own lifetime is quite a feat, but if he really wants to establish a lasting institution I hope he keeps his public issuances to the debt realm. A public hedge fund in an era of ever-increasing SEC scrutiny is a recipe for disaster, even if it is a quant shop.

clipped from money.cnn.com Kenneth C. Griffin fits the hedge fund stereotype quite nicely. He's young (38), fantastically rich (worth $2 billion or so), and he collects museum-quality art (he recently spent $80 million to take a Jasper Johns off David Geffen's hands). He's got the trophy home, obviously, and is married to a very attractive woman, the former Anne Dias. What sets him apart from his fellow nouveau zillionaires is the scale of his ambition. Griffin seems to be going for full-blown, captain-of-industry immortality, the kind achieved by titans who didn't just dot, but shaped, the landscape of business Ken wants to be a J.P. Morgan or John D. Rockefeller. That's hard to do if you're an adherent of the reclusive, cloak-and-dagger Way of the Hedgie. Citadel Investment Group, has around $13 billion in assets and is one of the largest and most powerful funds in the world. Citadel accounts for more than 3 percent of average daily trading volume on the New York, Tokyo and London exchanges,