Mr. Strauss: Let me start with the history of our firm. Ramius was founded about 15 years ago. The vision was to build an alternative investment management company to give institutional clients different points of access should they wish to invest in alternatives. The three important components are an internally managed hedge fund business with single- and multi-strategy funds, a fund of funds business, in which all the capital is allocated to external managers, and a real estate business comprising of both debt and equity. Maybe that takes us next to the Cowen transaction. The vision of building Ramius 15 years ago really hasn't changed, but occasionally our business models do have to change.
After 2008 we thought one of the most important considerations in the long-term stability of our business was ensuring the permanence of our equity capital. The most logical way to make our capital permanent would be to go public, which was not a realistic alternative for a hedge fund group early in 2009. The next best alternative was to find a public company with which we could merge and very quickly found Cowen, which had a number of characteristics that we liked. Three were businesses that we understood: equity sales and trading, equity research and corresponding capability in investment banking across verticals in certain industry groups - businesses we understood because we had run those types of businesses previously in our careers. Then Cowen had another key aspect that we thought was important: a very clean balance sheet. In the end, we did a reverse merger with Cowen, wherein we merged Ramius into Cowen & Company with Ramius and its affiliated groups, controlling just more than 71% of the stock and Cowen with about 29%.
Our relationship with Hatteras Funds dates back about two years. We were introduced to Hatteras by a mutual contact several years ago. And just as they did due diligence on us, we did the same on them. What we found was an exceptionally well-thought out business model focused on designing, structuring and delivering registered alternative investment products. Their team built strong relationships in the independent registered investment adviser community through an experienced team in the field, as well as significant home office resources to support those field representatives. We spent quite a bit of time with the Hatteras team, and after what I guess you'd call a beauty contest, in which we competed against a number of other firms, I'm pleased to say Hatteras selected us as their partner in the fund of hedge fund space.
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