New York Times – THIS week, a big hedge fund announced a big bond offering, which might sound like a big snooze. Considering the origins of most of Wall Street’s biggest blow-ups  liquidity crises  it shouldn’t be.
Kenneth Griffin, chief of Citadel Investment Group, which has decided to raise money through bond sales.
Citadel Finance, a unit of the Citadel Investment Group, a $12 billion hedge fund, disclosed on Monday that it intended to raise as much as $2 billion in bonds  a first in the industry. It follows the announcement that the Fortress Investment Group, a giant alternative investment group with billions in hedge funds, private equity and loans, is going public, another first for the United States markets. Both announcements suggest that hedge funds, at least a handful of them, are giving up some of their coveted privacy in exchange for more stable capital.
These funds are growing up.
Fortress was clear why it wanted to go public: it gets permanent capital, a currency  the stock  to do deals and pay employees and a sense, however ethereal, of physical permanence.
