Jamie Dinan isn't afraid to think big - and has the results to show for it
By Carolyn Sargent
Ah, youth. In 1987, Jamie Dinan was a 28-year-old Harvard MBA trading at Kellner DiLeo & Co., a $300 million hedge fund in New York, and feeling on top of the world. "In my mind, I was a superstar making a lot of money," he recalls with a grin.
The mid-'80s were heady days in the market. Speculating in mergers and acquisitions, Dinan was long equities and levered. To have more personal capital to invest, he had aggressively borrowed on his credit cards - at 18%. And he used that borrowed money to load up on derivatives. "Why buy stock, when you can buy a call option, where you can get even more bang for your buck?" a facetious Dinan asks now.
Come October 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average began giving up ground....