In June of 2016, Visium Asset Management, of which Jacob Gottlieb is CIO, announced that it would wind down its business in the wake of charges that emanated from bond mis-marking.
Jacob Gottlieb is the only key executive still standing at Visium. Like a captain who will not abandon a sinking ship, Gottlieb founded Visium in 2005 and he continues his role as CIO as the company continues to wind down.
The healthcare-focused hedge fund that Gottlieb created with his 20 investment partners was a perfect match for his experience in finance and his medical degree from NYU’s School of Medicine. After completing a medical internship Gottlieb ultimately decided he was more attracted to finance and started looking for a job on Wall Street.
He landed at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in 1998 as a buy-side analyst covering global healthcare. Gottlieb left Sanford after a couple of years to continue his career as a healthcare portfolio manager at Merlin Biomed Group. His tenure at Merlin was short and Gottlieb quickly moved on to a position at Balyasny Asset Management (BAM). It was here that he built up his team and his reputation for large portfolio gains and became a top earner at the firm. Seeking to manage more money, Gottlieb and his team left BAM with about $300 million in seed capital to start Visium.
At its peak, Visium was a mammoth $8 billion dollar hedge fund with 170 employees. Gottlieb has not been directly charged with any wrongdoing, and so continues his work as CIO.
Where is Everyone Now?
Joshua Brown, a graduate of Indiana University (BS, Finance) and MIT’s Sloan School of Management (MBA), was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Visium for more than 10 years with Sanjay Valvani. He has since gone on to become a Senior Vice President at Paulson & Co., a $9 billion dollar hedge fund firm best known for its bets against subprime mortgages before the financial crisis.
Steven Ku, the former COO of Visium, in a strange turn of events has pivoted entirely and has become an Executive Minister at NextGen Church as of September 2017. NextGen Church is a “multi-ethnic community of families and young adults whose mission is to love, serve and impact our world”. As a member of the pastoral team, Steven is involved in finance, administration and overall management of church operations. He is currently enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary pursuing an MA in Theology.
Ron Belldegrun, son of Kite Pharma CEO and Teva board member, Dr. Arie Belldegrun, was a core part of the Visium team.. Since his departure from Visium, Belldegrun has founded Consumer Health Ventures (CHV) with his father Arie Belldegrun. CHV is a healthcare start-up focused on building and investing in Consumer Health companies
Neetu Dhaliwal spent six years at Visium as Senior Analyst after graduating from Wharton and spending three years at JP Morgan as an Investment Banker. Similar to Ron Belldegrun, relatively little is known about Dhaliwal’s career post-Visium. He joined Hillary Clinton’s Hillary for America campaign in 2016 and is currently a Healthcare Investor according to his LinkedIn profile.
