Where Soros leads others will follow

matthew lynn

Today's banking big guns have long since left their old-style private investment ways behind them and moved on to new territories. But now hedge funds are moving in for the kill

George Soros may be more interested these days in his charities and in geopolitics and philosophy than he is in finance. But, like an old sailor, the talent of smelling which way the wind is blowing has yet to completely abandon him. Last week, Soros Fund Management announced it had hired Steven Mnuchin, the chief information officer at Goldman Sachs until last year, to run a new unit called SFM Capital Management. Its business: lending money to companies, in particular to ones running into difficulties. On the surface, it looks as if Mnuchin, like many other ambitious young financiers i...