NEW YORK CITY-Two New York hedge funds have signed leases totaling over 64,000 square feet of space. Visium Asset Management will more than double its size with 39,600 square feet of space on the 21st and 22nd floors of 888 7th Ave. and Pine River Capital Management will triple its space at 590 Madison Ave. to 25,125 square feet, relocating within the building.
The deals are the latest in several hedge fund leases in the city, including Hudson Bay Capital Management and Andor Capital Management.
For the Visium and Pine River deals, Studley managing director Daniel Posy and senior managing director Joe Messina represented the hedge funds in the lease transactions.
The leases--both expansions--come as money continues to pour into hedge funds. BarclayHedge and TrimTabs Investment Research, which track the flow of money into the funds on a monthly basis, recently reported that, year to date, $75 billion has been infused into them. This marks the largest inflow of funds, midyear, since 2007.
“We engaged several of the more high end buildings here in New York,” Posy tells GlobeSt.com of leasing efforts for Pine River, which started out at 590 Madison in what he describes as “a temporary office suite type space.” A fan of the building’s location, views and management style, it then moved on to become a sub-tenant.
Posy says he has definitely seen hedge funds, which he describes as his niche, looking to expand, though he’s not currently in the market with any additional ones. Visium was a client from six years ago, he says, when it spun off from another fund. “They’ve had some very good years of growth within their own business,” he says. “We’ve grown together.”
Sol Waksman, president of BarclayHedge, says that firms taking more space in the current climate is not surprising. “If assets under management by hedge funds are growing, which it is, then some of those funds will need to add more people, which translates into needing more office space,” he says.
According to the BaclayHedge data, for May alone hedge funds took in $8.1 billion. Industry assets were unchanged, at $1.79 trillion.
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