An affiliate of Ellington Fund Management, an Old Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund specializing in mortgage bond investments and CDOs, plans to go public, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
Ellington was founded in December 1994 with an investment from the Ziff family and Ellingtons six founding partners. Five of the founders are former members of Kidder Peabodys MBS trading and research group while one, Laurence Penn, spent a decade at Lehman Brothers where he ran the companys collateralized mortgage obligations, or CMO, trading.
The companys founder and chief executive, Michael Vranos, was head trader and senior manager of Kidder Peabodys MBS department which in the early 1990s had the largest CMO book. Penn is now vice chairman of Ellington. Richard Brounstein, director of investor relations at Ellington, was managing director of the fixed income securities division at Societe Generale Securities Corp., later SG Cowen, before he joined Ellington in 2000.
Ellington Financial said on Tuesday it intends to file a registration statement relating to an IPO of its common shares representing limited liability company interests. Ellington Financial was founded in 2007 and it is externally managed by an affiliate of Ellington Management Group. Ellington said in the statement that it plans on filing a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission before the end of the third quarter.
Vranos, a Harvard graduate and once an avid body builder he was Mr Teen Conncecticut as a youth was praised during the bear market of 1994 by Jack Welch, chairman of Kidder Peabodys parent company, General Electric, who said that Vranos has done a better job than 99% of the managers at GE at managing a cycle. Ellington Fund Management is named after Vranos' home town of Ellington, Connecticut.
