Rye’s Einhorn Profiled in Daily News As Mets Deal Moves Close
David Einhorn, resident of Rye's Greenhaven, is posied to close his minority investment in The New York Mets. Daily News sports writer Wayne Coffey recently profiled the hedge fund inventor and soon to be Mets owner:
"Fifteen years ago, Einhorn and then-partner Jeffrey Keswin founded Greenlight with just $900,000 in seed money – $500,000 from Einhorn's parents. Today the firm manages close to $8 billion…
David Einhorn lives in the Westchester town of Rye with his wife and three children, takes the train to his office, a check swing away from Grand Central Station and is said to be a big believer in the power of the afternoon nap. Just over six weeks ago, Einhorn emerged as the surprise winner of the sweepstakes to own a piece of the New York Mets…
On the 24th floor of the Graybar Building on East 45 St., in the same space where Greenlight partners (everybody at Greenlight is called a partner, investors included) make their billion-dollar decisions, the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust (EFCT) makes decisions of a different sort of import. The mission of the trust is to help people get along better, to build civility by supporting initiatives that make the world a kinder and more tolerant place.
You might have a hard time selling the inherent goodness of David Einhorn's heart to former Allied people. "David has gone to great lengths to present a choirboy image, (but) his methods are hardball and what you see is definitely not what you get," Walton says.
One company official puts it in an even blunter way. "Respectability is the last refuge of a scoundrel," says the official, who sparred with Einhorn and noted that the company spent almost $50 million of its investors' money fending off his attacks.
But friend and fellow hedge-funder Tilson says Einhorn is a highly principled man and "the antithesis of the stereotype" of a cutthroat hedge-fund manager – a genuine guy without a big ego, a family man who gets home in time for dinner, coaches his kids' ball teams and won his big pot in the World Series of Poker while wearing a gray sweatshirt decorated with the handprints of his wife and kids."
