Billionaire financier Izzy Englander, a towering figure in the global investing landscape, has recently executed a significant financial maneuver by selling a notable portion of his ownership in Millennium Management, the multibillion-dollar hedge fund conglomerate he established over three decades ago. The transaction, which marks a key moment in the firm’s ongoing evolution, involved transferring a minority interest in the company to a group of external investors, signaling both strategic foresight and institutional maturity. According to a memorandum distributed internally to Millennium employees on Monday and reviewed by Business Insider, the sale represents the culmination of carefully orchestrated negotiations that resulted in investors acquiring approximately fifteen percent of the hedge fund’s equity.
Anonymous sources familiar with the arrangement, who spoke on condition of confidentiality because they were not authorized to disclose the details publicly, revealed that the 15% stake equates to a roughly two-billion-dollar equity sale. This valuation, in turn, implied Millennium’s total worth to be around fourteen billion dollars—an astounding figure that places the firm among the world’s most highly valued privately held hedge fund enterprises. Despite the impressive scale of the deal, a spokesperson for Millennium opted not to provide further commentary, maintaining the company’s established discretion regarding financial transactions of this nature.
Within the memo circulated to its staff, Millennium’s management expressed pride in announcing what it described as the ‘successful completion’ of the sale of a minority, passive ownership interest in its management company. The message framed the event as a deliberate and forward-looking step in the company’s ongoing corporate development—one designed to strengthen the firm’s structural resilience, broaden its investor relationships, and strategically position Millennium for enduring growth in an increasingly competitive market environment. Importantly, several of Millennium’s long-term institutional supporters were involved in the purchase, emphasizing investor loyalty and continued confidence in the firm’s governance and performance trajectory. The transaction itself was overseen and executed through Petershill, a specialized division within Goldman Sachs Asset Management known for acquiring minority stakes in leading private equity, hedge fund, and alternative asset management firms.
Like many large-scale investment managers, Millennium’s business model generates revenue through two primary mechanisms: fees charged for managing client capital and performance-based profit shares—often referred to as incentive allocations—tied to the fund’s returns. Englander, together with other equity holders of the firm, directly benefits from a portion of this recurring income stream. Over time, these inflows have reinforced Millennium’s formidable balance sheet and fueled its impressive operational expansion.
Founded in 1989 by Englander, Millennium has evolved from a modest trading operation into one of the largest hedge funds on the planet, housing a workforce that now surpasses 6,400 professionals and encompassing more than 330 autonomous investment teams. Collectively, they manage an extraordinary seventy-nine billion dollars in assets on behalf of clients worldwide. This institutional scale and operational sophistication have been underpinned by extraordinary investment consistency: since its inception, Millennium has achieved an average annualized return of approximately fourteen percent and has experienced only a single year of losses over a thirty-five-year period. Such sustained performance not only bolstered the firm’s reputation among global allocators but also enabled Millennium to cultivate one of the industry’s most stable capital foundations. Investors traditionally commit funds for multi-year periods—often five years—thereby insulating the firm from short-term volatility and liquidity-driven outflows that frequently challenge other hedge fund operators.
When compared with peers in the public markets or recent industry acquisitions, Millennium’s fourteen-billion-dollar valuation stands out as a benchmark of premium worth. By contrast, Man Group—a publicly traded investment manager overseeing a wide range of hedge funds and alternative assets—commands a market capitalization of roughly 3.2 billion dollars. Likewise, Sculptor Capital Management, the rebranded successor of Och-Ziff Capital, was taken private in 2023 through a transaction that valued the entire management company at just above seven hundred million dollars. These comparisons highlight Millennium’s exceptional market standing and the considerable esteem with which it is regarded in the investment community.
In its internal communication, Millennium’s leadership framed the partial equity sale not as an isolated event but as a logical continuation of broader measures to ensure the organization’s long-term endurance as a preeminent global investment institution. Over the past several years, the seventy-seven-year-old Englander has deliberately expanded and diversified his senior executive team, entrusting operational and strategic responsibilities to a broader group of seasoned leaders capable of sustaining the firm’s complexity and reach. The memo further underscored this mission, stating that Englander and his management colleagues firmly believe the initiatives undertaken will reinforce the firm’s durability, support the longevity of its business model, and fortify Millennium’s positioning for continued growth and success in the decades ahead. In a tangible reflection of its resilience and ongoing financial strength, Millennium’s flagship fund was reported to be up six percent through the end of September—an outcome that continues to validate its disciplined investment methodology and its reputation as one of the most consistently successful hedge funds in the world.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/millennium-sells-minority-stake-investors-14-billion-valuation-izzy-englander-2025-11
