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Note: This signature emerging-markets fund has gained and lost billions in its quest for the summit.
As the evening sun slips behind Biscayne Bay, a well-heeled crowd of mostly men unbutton suit jackets and loosen ties, mingling on the sprawling cobblestone terrace of Miami's Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, once the posh winter residence of farm equipment king James Deering.
But tonight's crowd , institutional and high-net-worth investors attending a March conference on emerging markets , is less concerned with history than with the future. Wounds from the recent stock market meltdown are still fresh, but sinking money into far-flung countries with decent corporate governance, improved political stability and increasingly liquid capital markets is looking good, compared with the so-called safe bets of the developed world. And this was before Europe's sovereign debt crisis erupted.
The event's host, Marko Dimitrijevi[acute]c, moves through the crowd. He's approachable yet deliberate, choosing words carefully as he answers questions from investors about Everest Capital, the emerging-markets hedge fund he founded 20 years ago. Dimitrijevi[acute]c, with an angular face, 5-foot-9 build and serious tone, is intense. But interviews with his inner circle reveal he's also notoriously cool under pressure , a trait his chief risk officer describes as a "combination of intellectual firepower and the ability not to panic."
It may be a case of practice makes perfect, because he's certainly been tested. Everest Capital bled nearly $1 billion when it prematurely jumped back into the manic stock markets of late 2008. Convinced that the frenzied selling was overkill and eager to take advantage of cheap valuations, Everest piled on positions too soon and paid the price for impatience. Its emerging-markets fund lost 49.6 percent in 2008 and its global fund 51.9 percent.
For Dimitrijevi[acute]c, 2008 was an historic anomaly not unlike the Russian ruble crisis ten years earlier , the last time that Everest lost nearly $1 billion in less than a month, for being overexposed to Russia just as the country defaulted on its debt and devalued its currency.
But confidence in Dimitrijevi[acute]c, even back then, ran deep. In early 1999, Hungarian-born investing guru George Soros, who'd had money with Everest since 1992, handed Dimitrijevi [acute]c an additional $500 million. Today, Everest's 50-year-old founder says he never considered shuttering...