Bloomberg News has an article about hedge fund manager John Paulson's invitation to clients for a meeting about a fund "for investors looking to mitigate income taxes." The third paragraph of the article is this:
"He seems to be more focused on avoiding income taxes than on generating returns for his investors," said Brad Alford, head of Atlanta-based Alpha Capital Management LLC, who runs a mutual fund of funds that invests in hedge funds. "It gives billionaires a bad name."
The Web site of Alpha Capital Management links to two mutual funds, the Alpha Defensive Growth Fund and the Alpha Opportunistic Growth Fund. Yahoo! Finance lists the combined net assets of the two funds together at about $62 million, which is not a large amount of money in the professional money management business, especially compared to the $18 billion that John Paulson reportedly manages. The funds are both less than three years old. You can check out their performance for yourself.
If Mr. Alford wants to sneer at Mr. Paulson's performance or his tax strategies he has every right to do so. But why is his opinion — and his opinion alone, of all the other people out there who might possibly have an opinion — worth including in the Bloomberg article? It gives Bloomberg journalists a bad name.