Couple of Questions RE: Ospraie...

Some years ago, when Russia defaulted, a quite successful and well-regraded global fund named Everest Capital run by Marko Dmitrievic (sic?) had a harrowing near-death experience resulting from sizable GKO positions. Their assets droppped substantially with losses and some redemptions, but they made their case to their investors about what they did, and (perhaps surprisingly in the Darwinian world of Hedge Funds) many stuck it out. Yes fifty percent (read 50%) below your high-water mark means working like a mutual fund plebe for a few years with NO performance fees. Yet they persevered, and the investors who stayed with them were satisfied as they got paid on their short S&P hedges at the turn of the century and tagged the BRIC phenom rising like a phoenix out of the tech-bust.

So one must ask "why NOT Ospraie?? Why is Dwight Anderson bailing out? Where is the longer-term story or table-pounding about the long-cycle? Surely most investors need/want something like a commodity specialists in their FoFs or engineered portfolios...why not Ospraie? Is it shame or is the world so Darwinian that everyone just wants their cash back to give it to the luckier, or more astute traders who for whatever reason got it more right, or less-wrong than Mr Anderson...this time. He's presumably got Lehman's cash (even if its 50 cents on the dollar in value) and accumulated fees from the last four years which even after a fifty percent haircut is wealth beyond most successful traders' wildest imagination which like Everest before him, provides a stable asset base to punt around in those things that he presumably knows best.

Or maybe he has been hit with self-doubt about his prowess, or perhaps doubt about the longevity of a commodity boom in an overlevered liquid-hydrocarbon-challenged world where demographics in the rich countries (and China) will soon turn demonstrably for the worse, and authorities may finally acknowledge that it's excess demand that is the real problem. For what could be worse for commodity prices than parsimonious scaling down and conservation, for whatever reasons be they ecological economical, or philosophical. I do not pretend to know the answer.

But I look back on Everest's commitment, to do their best for themselves and their co-investors and I see an admirable integrity. No closing because they are too far below the high-water mark. No shuttering due to shame or embarrassment. OK maybe it was tax or some unknown considerations. But not being uber-cynical, I still cannot help but wonder about Ospraie, for Mr Anderson is an admitted substantial co-investor in his Fund. And I wonder how this will look to those sitting on the fence in the debate over whether the HF model is stupid and wildly asymmetric - paying gobs on the upside, and bolting with the cash at the first chance when adversity strikes. Maybe EVERYONE wants out, and I am wrong to raise the question of integrity, asymmetric payouts and disincentives to continuity. Or maybe everyone is simply tired of paying "alpha fees" for beta. We'll probably know the truth soon, in any event.