Reuters/ Brendan McDermid
Michael Steinberg, former SAC trader and founder of Reciprocal Venture Management.
Michael Steinberg, a former top trader at billionaire Steve Cohen's hedge fund, then known as SAC Capital Advisors, has raised at least $25 million for his newly-formed fintech venture fund, Reciprocal Venture Management, according to Bloomberg's Miles Weiss.Steinberg was found guilty of insider trading in December 2013 while at SAC, but the conviction was dropped two years later. The New Yorker previously reported that a potential insider trading case against Steve Cohen was based on an email that Steinberg had received from his analyst, that was then forwarded to another portfolio manager at the firm, and eventually Cohen himself.
SAC Capital Advisors, was barred from managing external money and pleaded guilty to insider trading. Cohen was never charged, and he neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing in a civil settlement. He is allowed to manage external capital again in 2018, and is reportedly prepping a huge hedge fund comeback.
Reciprocal is finalizing its first three investments for the fund, Bloomberg reports. Details are scant, but the firm plans to focus on five categories: capital markets, asset management, business-to-business payments, financial SaaS (software as a servive), and blockchain digital ledgers.
Before the fund, Steinberg personally invested in a tech company called Dataminr, which turns social media's firehose of data into useful information for the finance and government sectors.
Business Insider has reached out to Reciprocal for comment and will update this post if any more details emerge.