Giant payout for hedge fund bosses

FIVE bosses at London hedge fund manager Rubicon have shared a pot of up to £100m after profits trebled last year.

Most of them worked at American investment bank Salomon Brothers before setting up their own trading fund, which takes big bets on currencies, bonds, options and other high risk instruments.

The five are founder Jeffrey Brummette, currency expert Vilas Gadkari, Paul Brewer, Robert Greenshields and Joe Leitch.

Rubicon's UK accounts show it was allocated a £45.6m share of the profits of its parent company, registered in the Cayman Islands in the year to last August.

These profits trebled from £15m a year earlier. The firm has also put £58.9m into an employee trust which will pay out in later years.

Because Rubicon is offshore and registered as a limited partnership, it is not clear who gets exactly what.

But the group has just 18 staff and the five directors get the lion's share. Rubicon refused to confirm even their nationalities - most are American.

Asked about the hefty pay packages, it said: 'Performance comes first, pay comes only after that.'

Rubicon is the latest hedge fund operation to pay multi-million pound packages.

UK banks and brokers are watching them with envy. While UK traders are regulated heavily, hedge funds are largely unregulated.