To do that, the 50-year-old head of Saba Capital Management is attempting to buy his way to the top. He’s bidding — with a group of billionaire pals including Bill Ackman, Marc Lasry and Jeff Yass — for Sculptor Capital Management Inc., a beleaguered publicly traded money manager he aims to subsume into his $4 billion firm.
A public feud exploded a year later between Och and his former protégé, Jimmy Levin, over a succession plan, and Och eventually extended the fight to the younger man’s pay.Och, 62, left the firm in 2019 but remains a large shareholder and foe of 40-year-old Levin. The firm’s performance has continued to lag behind competitors, and fundraising has languished. It had four consecutive quarters of outflows.
The firm changed its name to Sculptor the year Och left to distance itself from its founder. Och, along with former partners who are also major shareholders, sued Sculptor last year over what they argued was Levin’s “absurd” pay package. Och cited a “personal issue” from Levin’s past as the reason he didn’t elevate him to CEO five years before.
Sculptor said it wants to keep the status quo because clients must approve the deal, and they chose to invest with Levin. It said in a filing that a number of clients had “raised concerns” about changes in the investment team without detailing the number of clients or the nature of their apprehension.
Under Weinstein’s plan, Sculptor would be run as its own brand within Saba. With the current CIO in a lesser role, or even gone, Weinstein could use the extra money – Levin was paid $145 million in 2021 — to help retain strategy heads and others among its 100 investment professionals. He’d also need to reassure Saba investors that the extra work wouldn’t distract him from managing their money.