FUNDING AREAS: Jewish charities, education
SOURCE OF WEALTH: Founder, Talpion Fund Management
NET WORTH: $1.56 billion
IP TAKE: Henry Swieca loves to give to charities in support of his Jewish heritage, especially education.
PROFILE: Speaking to a new class of graduates at his alma mater, Columbia Business School, Henry Swieca said, “If you want to make it, take your career into your own hands.” A billionaire hedge fund manager who faced significant adversity as a youth, Swieca knows what he's talking about. He first turned to the stock market out of survival, struggling to pay for his education, as well as his brother's medical school. He went on to cofound Highbridge Capital Management and found Talpion Fund Management, and earned a spot on the Forbes Billionaires list.
Swieca left his first firm, Highbridge Capital, in 2011. He'd been with the $25 billion dollar multi-strategy alternative investment management firm since 1992, when he and his childhood buddy Glenn Dubin decided to go all in. They named the hedge fund after a an aqueduct that connects Washington Heights--their old stomping grounds--and the Bronx. The significance of this is felt when you hear that Swieca was born to Polish holocaust survivors who immigrated to New York in 1955. Both parents died when he was just nineteen, not yet a self-made billionaire.
Swieca made his first stock market investments with a small inheritance from his parents. He kept tinkering with trades while studying science at SUNY Stony Brook and getting his MBA at Columbia. After putting himself through college, he worked for Merrill Lynch, was a founding trader on the New York Futures Exchange, and then joined Dillon Read. It was after years moving through the institutions that he and Dubin decided to take a risk. Before Highbridge, it was the Dubin and Swieca Group at E.F. Hutton. The returns on their pioneering investment strategies gave them the influx they needed to launch Highbridge.
There was an earlier Dubin-Swieca business venture: while roommates at Stony Brook, the pair took over Dubin's grandpa's chocolate business. It was short-lived, but they didn't do too bad. Today, however, they have parted business ways, though not on bad terms. After JP Morgan Chase bought a 55 percent share in Highbridge, the founders knew it was only a matter of time before they moved on to new ventures.
For Swieca, the new venture was Talpion Fund Management. Talpion's name has quite a different origin than the aqueduct linking poor boroughs. It comes from Talpiot, a Hebrew word meaning a castle's turrets, or magnificently built. An Orthodox Jew married to an Israeli-American, Swieca chose another term with personal significance. It also spoke to the heights he'd achieved. Yet Talpion was as short-lived as the chocolate business. In Fall 2011, Swieca returned clients funds and shifted his focus to managing his family assets.
The Swieca Family Foundation uses the offices of Swieca's former hedge fund. You'll find very little information by googling the Foundation. The private grantmaking organization has no website, and there is no neat mission statement explaining it's focus, goals, or preferences. Instead, there's a small trail of beneficiaries like the Frisch School, the American Israel Education Foundation, and the ALS Association of Greater New York as evidence of the Foundation's existence. Under $1 million goes out the foundation's door annually.
Swieca has always been his own man, even during his 25 years as partner with Dubin. He wrapped up his speech to the starry-eyed Columbia business grads by saying, “Checking boxes and following a set career path was never my style... Look at your skills and what’s ahead for the market, then match what you’re good at with the opportunities that are out there." He follows his own advice to this day.
Swieca is on the executive committee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby. His political contributions history is diplomatically bipartisan, with equal donations to the Obama for America and McCain-Palin Victory campaigns in 2008.
CONTACT:
- Esther Swieca, Director, Swieca Family Foundation, 65 E. 55th Street, Floor 34, New York, NY 10022, (212) 735-5377
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