Hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen did not let the filing of criminal charges against his $14 billion SAC Capital Advisors get in the way of a party this weekend at his vacation estate in tony East Hampton, New York.

The Saturday night party at Cohen's 10-bedroom home on Further Lane took place two days after federal prosecutors in New York announced the filing of a five-count criminal indictment against SAC Capital that portrayed the 21-year-old Stamford, Conn.-based fund as a breeding ground for unlawful insider trading.

The lavish affair, which one source said included delivery of $2,000 worth of tuna from a local fish store to Cohen's home, was planned before the charges were filed.

A person familiar with the event said the party attended by a few dozen people was intended by the 57-year-old manager to show support for ovarian cancer research, though it was not a fundraiser.

On Friday, lawyers for SAC Capital entered a not guilty plea to the charges. Some in the hedge fund industry said a fierce determination to carry on business as usual was behind Cohen's decision to go ahead with the bash at his 9,000-square-foot home on a street famed for its waterfront mansions.

Cohen, whose estimated fortune is $9 billion, set up shop in 1992 with just $25 million and earned a reputation as of the greatest stock traders of his generation. He built a firm that has posted a 25 percent average annual return, one of the best performance track records in the $2.4 trillion hedge fund industry, despite charging investors some of the highest fees.

SAC Capital, after the indictment was announced, sent an email to employees and investors saying the firm would operate as normal. It stressed that prosecutors did not intend to take any action that would imperil the firm's ability to return some $4 billion in outside investor money by year's end.

RARE MOVE RAISES QUESTIONS

It's a rare move for federal prosecutors to indict a corporation, and it remains to be seen just how long Wall Street banks that lend money to SAC Capital and trade with it, will continue to do.

It also remained to be seen whether Cohen, who faces no criminal charges himself, can keep his hedge fund empire together as a fully functioning firm employing nearly 1,000 people, with offices in eight cities around the globe.

And it was unclear whether Cohen's more than 500 investment professionals, traders and analysts, will remain with the firm as the criminal proceeding unfolds. Investors have withdrawn most of the $6 billion in outside money the fund managed at the beginning of the year.

"I would be running for the hills and looking for a job now if I were an SAC employee" said Mark Jordan, a veteran wealth management recruiter. "Who in their right mind would put money in SAC again?"

A review of LinkedIn profiles for more than a dozen SAC Capital employees revealed that some have been connecting through the online networking site with Wall Street job recruiters.

Up until recently, headhunters had said they were not seeing a flood of resumes from SAC employees, even after U.S. securities regulators filed a civil administrative complaint against Cohen on July 19 for failing to supervise two employees charged by prosecutors with insider trading.

(Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan and Katya Wachtel; Editing by Frank McGurty, Paritosh Bansal and David Gregorio)

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Some investors in SAC Capital — Steve Cohen's beleaguered hedge fund facing insider trading indictments — want to pull their money now, fearing the government will freeze assets.

But Bloomberg is reporting the $14 billion fund told clients that final payments will be made at the end of the year as usual, despite some investor pleas to recoup all of their money before then.

SAC has tried to keep a "business as usual" mentality, despite the highly-publicized investigation.

But the numbers tell another story. SAC execs think all outside investor money could be gone from the firm by the beginning of 2014 (from Bloomberg):

SAC started the year with $15 billion of assets, about $6 billion of which belonged to outsiders. As insider-trading probe against the firm intensified, clients redeemed more than $3 billion in the first half of 2013, which is being returned over the course of this year. SAC’s executives have said they expect the firm to start 2014 with about $9 billion in assets and that virtually all outside investors will be gone by then, according to people familiar with the firm.

At least 11 former or current SAC employees have been tied up in the investigation, Bloomberg reports.

Read the full report at Bloomberg>

SEE ALSO: Indictment Of SAC Capital Doesn't Stop Steve Cohen From Throwing A Huge Party

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SAC Capital started the year with $15 billion in assets, $6 billion of which belonged to outside investors.

But a high profile insider trading probe has seen Steve Cohen's embattled fund lose $3 billion in the first half of the year from investors (the firm has resisted client pressure to return all the money before the end of the year).

Bloomberg reported that the firm expects to start 2014 with $9 billion in assets, meaning that nearly all of the outside investors will have bailed en masse.

Nearly all, but not all. The Wall Street Journal found one SAC loyalist who isn't going anywhere. And one is the loneliest number. From the Journal:

"I feel like Will Smith in 'I Am Legend' when everyone else has died," said Mr. Butowsky, managing director of Chapwood Investments LLC, an adviser to wealthy clients on hedge-fund and other investments. "I'm the last man standing."

While Butowsky isn't seeking a payout, many of SAC's other major clients like Blackstone already headed for the exits, the Journal reports. As a result, SAC executives have weighed the possibility of turning the fund into looking more like a family office.

Read the full report at the Wall Street Journal>

SEE ALSO: Seriously? JP Morgan Is Being Investigated For Hiring Well-Connected People?

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This just in from Fox Business Network's senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino... 

FBN NEWS: what a way to end a slow week on wall street: stevie cohen telling friends he's resigned to running a family office more at 330

— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) August 30, 2013

FBN NEWS: SAC Capital expects all outside $ to leave the fund by years end Steve Cohen is now "resigned" to running a "family office" FBN330

— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) August 30, 2013

Back in July, Cohen's $14 billion SAC Capital Advisors was hit with criminal charges of insider trading.

U.S. prosecutors charged SAC "with criminal responsibility for insider trading offenses committed by numerous employees and made possible by institutional practices that encouraged the widespread solicitation and use of illegal inside information," the indictment stated.  

Two of SAC's former portfolio managers have insider trading trials coming up in November. 

The SEC also civilly charged Cohen last month with failing to supervise the two portfolio managers. 

Cohen, 57, launched SAC in 1992.  The hedge fund employs about 900 people worldwide.

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SAC Capital Advisors, the $14 billion hedge fund run by Steven Cohen, is introducing a retention program to keep its portfolio managers and analysts around, CNBC's Kate Kelly reports. 

From Kate Kelly: 

SAC Capital just announced retention program for PMs and analysts. Higher bonuses and base pay for long-short managers, among other things

— Kate Kelly (@KateKellyCNBC) September 4, 2013

SAC offering long-shorts 3% bonus in addition to usual cut of P&L for this year, plus higher base salary in 2014

— Kate Kelly (@KateKellyCNBC) September 4, 2013

SAC trying to stave off a big talent exodus early next year -- even though at 15-25% of PnL they already have some of highest pay in HF land

— Kate Kelly (@KateKellyCNBC) September 4, 2013

In late July, SAC was slapped with criminal insider trading charges. U.S. prosecutors charged SAC "with criminal responsibility for insider trading offenses committed by numerous employees and made possible by institutional practices that encouraged the widespread solicitation and use of illegal inside information," the indictment stated.  

Two of SAC's former portfolio managers have insider trading trials coming up in November.

The SEC also civilly charged Cohen for failing to supervise the portfolio managers. 

Cohen launched SAC in 1992.  The hedge fund has around 900 employees globally. 

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A gentlemen's agreement between hedge fund titans Steve Cohen and Izzy Englander not to poach employees from each other appears to be over.

At least three investment professionals have left Cohen's embattled Stamford, Conn.-based SAC Capital Advisors for Englander's multistrategy shop Millennium Partners in Manhattan in recent months, according to people familiar with the situation.

Alexey Chentsov joined Millennium this month as a portfolio manager focused on quantitative investments in foreign exchange and fixed income. Chentsov was a quantitative analyst at SAC from February 2004 to April of this year.

And Santiago Falconi, an analyst at SAC with the firm since March 2006, also left recently to be a portfolio manager at Millennium; he will join in January.

Both men will work for Andres Anker, a portfolio manager at SAC who left in June for Millennium after nearly 10 years under Cohen, according to people with knowledge of the firm.

Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for SAC, and Carly Westerman, a spokeswoman for Millennium, declined to comment. Chentsov, Falconi and Anker did not respond to requests.

The moves aren't a major change to either firm but underscore the upheaval SAC faces since running into trouble with regulators.

The U.S. government filed a criminal fraud charge in July against SAC for allegedly fostering a culture on insider trading. The firm has contested that and related charges.

Millennium has more than 1,300 employees and 140 specialized trading teams managing $18.5 billion in assets. And SAC runs almost $14 billion as of July 1 using about 1,000 employees, including 125 long-short equity portfolio management teams plus an undisclosed number of quantitatively oriented PMs.

The Millennium International Fund is up 7.13 percent through July, according to a person familiar with the returns. SAC has gained more than 11 percent through August. SAC's assets under management will likely fall to between $9 billion and $10 billion--mostly Cohen's own money--by early 2014 as investor redemptions are processed.

SAC recently moved to retain investment staff, increasing base pay to a minimum of $300,000 in 2014—up from $200,000 in 2013--and adding an incentive bonus of 3 percent for work this year, according to a recent CNBC report.

Several departures preceded those pay increases.

In August, SAC cut one unit, Parameter Capital Management, run by portfolio managers Glenn Shapiro and Anil Stevens.

Stevens is leaving to launch his own fund, according to Reuters. The move was planned before the Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against SAC.

Many investors have redeemed their money from SAC in the last year. Accordingly, SAC cut about a dozen people on its marketing and investor relations staff in August.

Those departures included Chris Rae, a director who had been with the firm since 2008. Rae did not respond to a request for comment.

Headhunters say it makes sense for SAC employees to consider leaving the firm.

"It would be clearly sensible for anyone at SAC to be exploring other options right now and to be putting their candidacy in early for 2014 hires," said Bob Olman, founder of hedge fund-focused recruiting firm Alpha Search Advisory Partners.

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Legal problems haven't stopped SAC Capital from doing what it normally does — make serious cash.

Reuters' Katya Wachtel reports that, as of Friday, the hedge fund is up 13% YTD.

STEVEN A. COHEN'S SAC CAPITAL ADVISORS GAINED ROUGHLY 13 PERCENT AS OF FRIDAY - source

— Katya Wachtel (@katyawachtel) September 25, 2013

According to reports, SAC Capital, helmed by its billionaire founder Steve Cohen, is seeking to settle allegations that it engaged in insider trading.

In the meantime, it's business as usual.

Now, 13% still doesn't beat the S&P 500, which is up 16% YTD, but 13% is a nice number when you compare to the numbers hedge funds of SAC's size have been putting up.

This summer Reuters reported that Pershing Square, Bill Ackman's hedge fund, was up 4% year to date.

Forbes has Greenlight Capital, David Einhorn's hedge fund, up 7.9% as of this summer.

SAC's numbers are getting beaten by another peer's though. Dan Loeb's Third Point has returned 15% YTD, according to Forbes.

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This is by far the best line in the Wall Street Journal's latest article on Steve Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors... 

In an effort to boost morale, Mr. Cohen arranged in July for a local "Super Duper Weenie" hot-dog truck to swing by SAC's office and dispense free food.

SAC was indicted by a federal grand jury on criminal insider trading charges in late July. 

The fund has been hit with a slew of redemptions this year. Some traders have even jumped ship for rival funds. 

According to the Journal, SAC Capital and federal prosecutors are expected to reach a settlement soon.  The Journal reports that it could be in the $1.5 to $2 billion range.

[via Dealbreaker]

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We've heard a rumor based on a source who claims to have seen it that billionaire hedge fund manager Steven Cohen, who runs SAC Capital Advisors, keeps a live and very large pig with a tattoo in his 35,000 square-foot Connecticut mansion.

A spokesperson for Cohen declined to comment for this story. 

Apparently, the tattooed pig is actually a walking piece of art.

Cohen is a huge art collector.  His expansive collection includes pieces by Monet, Picasso, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol, according to a 2010 Vanity Fair profile. 

We did some research and the only artist known for inking swine is Belgium-born Wim Delvoye. Delvoye is also known for making the Cloaca—a machine that turns food into feces (a.k.a. the "poop machine"). 

Delvoye runs an Art Farm outside of Beijing and has been tattooing live pigs since 2004.  His ink designs can be anything from Louis Vuitton "LVs" to Disney princesses.  We're not sure what sort of tattoo design Cohen's pig has, though. 

So how do you tattoo a pig?

Well, the pig isn't awake during the inking process.   

"To tattoo a pig, we sedate it, shave it and apply Vaseline to its skin," Delvoye said in an interview back in 2007 with ArtAsiaPacific. 

The tattooing actually adds value to the pig.  According to an article in Complex magazine, some of the pigs have sold for over $150,000.  

We were unable to get a comment from Delvoye or his studio at the time of publication. 

If anyone has seen the pig or is aware of the transaction, please email jlaroche@businessinsider.com.

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Facing mounting legal charges, SAC Capital's billionaire manager Steve Cohen will auction a handful of famous pieces of art from his storied collection, the New York Times' Peter Lattman and Carol Vogel report.

Cohen — who has seen redemptions from his fund as his lawyers reportedly broker a $2 billion deal with the SEC over a years-long insider trading investigation — will put up two major Andy Warhol paintings and an "abstract canvas" by Gerhard Richter, sources told the Times.

From the report:

The two Warhols, both painted in 1963, are “Liz #1 (early Colored Liz),” an image of Elizabeth Taylor on a bright yellow background estimated to sell for $20 million to $30 million, and “5 Deaths on Turquoise (Turquoise Disaster),” thought to bring in $7 million to $10 million. Sotheby’s featured the Warhols last week at the Katara Art Center in Doha, Qatar, where it was showing upcoming highlights from next month’s event.

People familiar with Mr. Cohen’s collection said that these paintings were part of a larger group of his works being put up for auction.

In April, Cohen purchased Picasso's "Le Rêve" for $150 million from casino magnate Stephen Wynn. "When you stand in front of it, you’re blown away," Cohen told the Times then in a rare interview.

Cohen's fund — which stood at $15 billion at the beginning of the year — could become just a family office once investor money is returned, a process already underway. About $9 billion of assets under management is Cohen's fortune.

Read the full report at the New York Times »

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The WSJ tweeted earlier that prosecutors are coming to angreement with SAC Capital over insider trading criminal charges. Remember — SAC already paid a $616 million civil fine.

U.S. prosecutors and SAC Capital agree in principle on insider-trading penalty exceeding $1billion. http://t.co/hNaBnT26jX

— WSJ Breaking News (@WSJbreakingnews) October 17, 2013

More specifically, the settlement should end up between $1.2 and $1.4 billion. It also wouldn't sqash any on-going investigations into SAC CEO Steve Cohen's own trading activity.

For the full story, head to WSJ>

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New York Post's Page Six unearthed this gem in a new book about billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen paying Guy Fieri to spend the day with him eating diner food. 

From Page Six: 

Cohen paid Fieri to drive around Connecticut with him to reenact a fantasy episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” reveals Allen Salkin in his book, “From Scratch: Inside the Food Network.”

But after “Cohen paid Guy Fieri $100,000 to be his friend for a day,” Salkin writes the odd couple became so close that the chef’s top-rated show even featured Cohen’s favorite hot-dog spot, the (perhaps appropriately titled) Super Duper Weenie.

A spokesperson for Cohen told Page Six that the story is not true, but said they do know each other.

We found the episode of "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" featuring the Fairfield, Connecticut-based Super-Duper Weenie.  In it, Fieri says his "friends" Alex and Steve (a.k.a. Cohen and his wife) were the ones who told him about it.

Fieri said they invited him over to their house for dinner one night and the hot dog truck showed up. 

Also, speaking of the Super Duper Weenie, Cohen got the hot dog truck to stop by SAC Capital Advisor's Stamford, Conn., headquarters the day the fund was criminally indicted on insider trading charges. SAC may end up paying a record fine of $1.8 billion to settle those charges. 

Watch the episode below: 

SEE ALSO: Does Steve Cohen Keep A Live Pig With A Tattoo In His Connecticut Mansion?

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Bloomberg News reports that Stamford, Connecticut headquartered SAC Capital Advisors plans to shut down its London office by the end of this year. 

A bunch of portfolio managers in SAC's London unit, SAC Global Investors, have already left the office located at St. Martins Court on 10 Paternoster Row. 

Back in July, SAC, which is run by billionaire Steve Cohen, was criminally indicted in federal court in New York for insider trading offenses committed by "numerous employees". SAC was charged with four counts of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud. 

This year, the hedge fund, which employees 950 people globally, has been hit with a slew of redemptions.  What's more is many traders and portfolio managers have jumped ship for rival firms.

SAC may end up paying a record fine of $1.8 billion to settle the charges. 

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Federal prosecutors are close to finalizing a settlement with SAC Capital that would end a painful chapter for the embattled hedge fund, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that a deal could be announced as early as this week.

Any settlement between the U.S. Attorney for New York's Southern District and SAC, which was indicted on criminal securities and wire fraud in July, would involve a guilty plea, according to one of these people, and a fine of more than a billion dollars, others familiar with the matter have said.

The basic terms of the settlement have already been hammered out, one of these people added, but a number of more technical issues still need to be resolved.

Spokesmen for the U.S. Attorney's Office and SAC declined to comment.

For SAC, which manages about $13 billion, the admission of guilt is probably more significant than the payout.

Although the exact details of the anticipated plea could not yet be determined, any admission of guilt will probably render SAC unable to manage public money in the future. That means the firm either will have to convert quickly to a so-called family office, solely managing founder Steve Cohen and his senior employees' money, or shut down entirely.

If SAC opts to close, said securities lawyers and a person familiar with the matter, it can move its remaining capital and its staff into a new money-management firm with a new name. But even after that, Cohen, who was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in July for failure to supervise errant employees, faces the prospect of a securities-industry bar that would restrict his trading abilities dramatically.

Prosecutors reportedly told SAC that any settlement deal would have to be completed before Nov. 18, which is when the federal trial against longtime SAC manager Michael Steinberg commences.

Eyeing that date and aware of the firm's desire for resolution, SAC employees have been expecting a deal this week, according to someone who works there.

The government has reportedly demanded a fine of $1.8 billion. SAC has held out for a figure lower than that, said someone familiar with the matter, and a deduction from the eventual fine of $616 million it paid earlier this year to settle related SEC charges.

Whether they have prevailed, however, is not yet clear.

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It was expected today and now here it is — hedge fund SAC Capital has plead guilty to insider trading charges. The firm will pay $1.8 billion in fines ($1.2 billion was expected) and close its doors to outside investors.

Here's U.S. Attorney Preet Bahrara's office in the Southern District of New York tweeted about it this morning:

SAC mgmt companies agree to plead guilty to all counts in crim indict, pay $1.8 billion, & terminate SAC Capital’s investment advisory bus

— SDNYnews (@SDNYnews) November 4, 2013

The government indicted the fund back in July, saying the firm's "relentless pursuit of an information 'edge' fostered a business culture within SAC in which there was no meaningful commitment to ensure that such 'edge' came from legitimate research and not inside information."

That essentially means that CEO Steve Cohen's incredible run as one of Wall Street's most sought after money managers is finished. By the end of the year, $6 billion will be returned to outside investors — pension funds, high net worth individuals etc. — and SAC will be a family office with $8 billion AUM.

The FBI, the Justice Department and the SEC have all been involved in investigating SAC in their own ways, and this admission of guilt doesn't end those investigations. The FBI is still going through Cohen's trades, and the SEC is still investigating him as an individual as well. The regulator seeks to ban him from the securities industry entirely.

Until then, as Bloomberg TV's Stephanie Ruhle pointed out, the immediate, painful change at SAC stemming from these legal issues  will be the end of its ability to recruit and keep the best and brightest on Wall Street — Cohen's "power posse."

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U.S. District Attorney Preet Bharara spoke publicly about the $1.8 billion fine and admission of guilt hedge fund SAC Capital agreed to this morning — the settlement is still subject to Court approval.

Columbia law professor John Coffee told Fox Business Network that Cohen had to make this deal, or take the risk of having an even more expensive Court case drag SAC Capital through even more reputational mud.

The fund will also return all outside capital and become a family office.

At the government's press conference, an FBI official said that SAC created an unprecedented "culture of corporate corruption."

Now — a few details about the settlement. U.S. Attorney  Preet Bharara said that no individuals have been indicted, and that those who have already been indicted (like former SAC employee Mathew Martoma, whose trial begins next year) will still be presumed innocent despite the firm's admission of guilt.

On the other hand, individuals that have yet to be accused of insider trading aren't safe yet. For example, the SEC is continuing its probe into Steven Cohen as an individual, and that means the SEC could still bar him from the securities industry for failing to supervise his brokers.

Until then, he could technically just start another hedge fund — not exactly what the SEC is going for.

"No institutions should rest easy in the belief that it is too big to jail," said Bharara. "Today one of the world's most powerful hedge funds... agreed to shut down... That is the just... outcome."

A few more important points about the settlement: The SEC will create a timetable for unwinding the hedge fund. No outside investor money will be used to pay the hedge fund's $1.8 billion fine (which Bharara called "fair but steep), and there will be no deduction or tax benefit available for funds used to pay this settlement (which, for the record, will go to the U.S. Treasury).

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This morning the Justice Department announced that it had come to an agreement with hedge fund SAC Capital.

The fund had been charged with insider trading, and in order to settle those charges, it admitted guilt, agreed to pay a $1.8 billion fine, and return all money belonging to outside investors.

In short, the storied hedge fund would shut down, leaving CEO Steve Cohen — known for being one of the most successful traders on Wall Street — with a $9 billion family office... and an ongoing SEC investigation into his own trading.

Cohen began his Stamford-headquartered hedge fund in 1992 with only $25 million, and came into prominence for his grand slam returns. In its better days, SAC had $14 billion assets under management and employees around 900 people globally. 

Then things turned very sour, as accusations of insider trading started to plague the firm and its subsidiary hedge funds.

Most notably, last year Cohen was fingered in several media reports as "Portfolio Manager A" in the insider trading case against former CR Intrinsic (a subsidiary of SAC) portfolio manager Mathew Martoma.  

Since then, Federal authorities haven't given an inch, and in a press conference about SAC's settlement today, U.S. Attorney Preet Bahrara hinted that prosecutors and regulators were far from done with Cohen and his firm.

"No institutions should rest easy in the belief that it is too big to jail," said Bharara. "Today one of the world's most powerful hedge funds... agreed to shut down... That is the just... outcome."

Here's how it all fell down.

Steven Cohen originally hails from Long Island He grew up in a middle class family and had a lot of siblings.

Steve Cohen was born on June 11, 1956. He's the third out of eight kids.  

He grew up on Great Neck, Long Island, New York. 

His father worked at a dress manufacturer and his mother was a homemaker who also taught piano lessons. 

Source: BusinessWeek, Source: WSJ 

In high school, the billionaire worked at a supermarket.

Cohen was a "fruit boy" at Bohack supermarket where he made a $1.85 an hour.

He quit that job because he was making more at the poker table.  

Source: Vanity Fair

He graduated from Wharton with a degree in economics.

He studied economics at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.  

The New York art auction season got off to a slow start last night in another blow to embattled hedge funder Steve Cohen's week.

"Mann und Frau (Umarmung)" by Schiele, widely rumored to be owned by the billionaire, did not receive a single bid at Christie's auction, the FT's Elizabeth Paton reports.

It has been a rough few days for Cohen, whose SAC Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to insider trading and swallowed a record $1.2 billion fine.

A quarter of the "high-profile Impressionist and Modern paintings" went unsold at the auction. Total sales came in at $144.2 million, "well below the low estimate of $188m initially made by the house," according to the report.

Read the full report at the FT »

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In January(ish), PBS' investigative documentary series "Frontline" will air its special on SAC Capital, the once high-powered hedge fund that Friday agreed to plead guilty to insider trading and pay a $1.8 billion fine.

SAC, which will now have to close its doors to outside investors, is headed by legendary trader Steve Cohen. According to the Feds, he's guilty of fostering a "culture of corporate corruption" and failing to supervise his traders as they used inside information to make incredible returns.

Now "Frontline" has released video that it obtained during the making of its documentary — video that shows that Cohen may not have been totally clear on what "inside information" meant on Wall Street.

Or at least, it seems like he doesn't understand it in a hypothetical situation lawyers gave him during his deposition.

There's more video of Cohen saying that he relies on his council and hasn't read the "vague" rules on insider trading over at "Frontline."

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Hedge fund manager Steve Cohen has at least one easy way to make up some of the $1.2 billion he recently agreed to pay the government: Cash in on SAC Capital Advisors' sprawling real estate holdings that stretch across three continents.

Much has been made of billionaire Cohen's personal properties.

His homes, all in the New York City area, include a $23.1 million, 35,000 square foot mansion in Greenwich, Conn.; a $115 million midtown duplex already for sale; two West Village residences valued at $23.4 million and $38.8 million, respectively; and adjacent homes in East Hampton, N.Y. worth an estimated $62.5 million and $18 million respectively based on purchase prices, according to a recent Forbes report.

What has gotten less attention is Cohen's array of luxury office space. He's started moving some of it already; the embattled $14 billion hedge fund firm plans to close its trading operation in London's posh financial center—called the "City"—by year end.

What's unclear is if SAC will also rent or sell its other offices. In addition to its two-building Stamford, Conn. headquarters, the firm works out of two sleek locations in midtown Manhattan and one in Hong Kong's high-end "Central" neighborhood.

SAC also has separate administrative locations for records in Boston, Singapore, Beijing and Tokyo, according to government filings.

In early November, SAC pleaded guilty to criminal insider trading charges and agreed to pay a $1.2 billion fine, pending approval by a judge.

Cohen, who has not been personally charged with any crime, also agreed to stop managing outside capital. That comes on top of a previous $616 million fine by the Securities and Exchange Commission for related charges. Those deals are separate from two trails of former SAC employees charged with insider trading, Michael Steinberg and Mathew Martoma.

SAC is attempting to sublet one floor of its space at 330 Madison Ave. in New York, according to people familiar with the situation and marketing materials.

The firm put the entire 33rd floor up for rent around Aug. 1 but has yet to find a tenant.

The 9,818-square-foot space has "good light and views" and an "elegant pantry," according to the materials. SAC is asking $85 a square foot per month to take over a lease that ends in July 2021. The firm is keeping two other floors in the same building, which also houses satellite offices for $190 billion Guggenheim Partners.

SAC paid between $70 and $83 a square foot when it signed the 10-year lease at 330 Madison in 2010 for more than 33,000 square feet over three floors, according to a real estate broker with access to deal data.

Today, the average asking price for an office in midtown Manhattan is $71.21 a square foot, according to real estate firm CBRE Group. The average for a boutique financial services building like 330 Madison is $106.54 a square foot. The peak for such so-called "Class A" space before the financial crisis was $128 and the nadir in 2009 was $64.

A spokesman for SAC declined to comment, but a person familiar with the situation said the move was unrelated to the family office transition and did not represent cuts to the business.

SAC added a second Manhattan office at 510 Madison Ave. in May 2011 and was already planning to consolidate the location of some staff, according to the person. A group of quantitative traders who previously occupied the floor now up for rent are now on a different floor in the same building.

That 510 Madison office—one of the premiere locations for hedge funds in New York City—could attract even higher rental prices were SAC to downsize.

SAC has about 70,000 square feet spread between the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth floors. The firm took a 10-year lease for the space in 2011 and was one of the first tenants in the building, which features a pool, gym, floor-to-ceiling windows and 10-foot ceilings. SAC paid between $80 and $99 a square foot, according to people familiar with the situation.

Based on recent leases, SAC could get between $100 and $140 a square foot for a sublease, according to a broker with knowledge of the market. Other tenants in 510 Madison include hedge fund firms Senator Investment Group, Valinor Management, Junto Capital Partners and Jay Goldman & Co.

"SAC can salvage value from its existing office space as it is located in two premier buildings," said Jonathan Luttwak, co-head of global alternative investment services at real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield.

Luttwak said SAC would almost certainly get more than it paid.

"Not surprisingly, SAC also signed for their existing space at relatively low points in the market and is paying low rents for those buildings," he said.

SAC's headquarters on the Stamford waterfront would fetch far less.

The firm's main offices at 72 Cummings Point Road--which features the large trading floor that Cohen himself sits in the middle of--would get about $35 a square foot to rent, according to a person with knowledge of the local market. A second building nearby at 22 Gatehouse Road would likely get less, about $30 a square foot.

"Stamford in general is a sought-after location for financial firms and it's basically as acceptable as Greenwich for hedge funds," said Steve Greenbush, a Stamford-based broker with CBRE. "At the same time, we've seen a slowdown in demand since the financial crisis so the market isn't quite as hot as it once was."

SAC would have some high-powered help were it to downsize. Its primary broker in New York is Newmark Grubb Knight Frank vice chairman Neil Goldmacher, widely considered a dean of Manhattan hedge fund real estate.

In Connecticut, SAC has recently been represented by Brian Carcaterra of CBRE. Carcaterra worked at Newmark from 2003 to September 2012 and is close to Cohen's firm through a personal relationship with soon-to-depart Chief Operating Officer Sol Kumin.

Carcaterra and Kumin both played on the same lacrosse team as undergraduates at Johns Hopkins in the late 1990s.

The two men initially took different paths after college. Kumin stayed in finance and joined fast-growing SAC early in his career. He rose quickly and ultimately "helped create our global strategy and footprint," as Cohen put it in a November 21 note to SAC employees. Carcaterra, by contrast, played professional lacrosse from 2000 to 2003 and was a Major League Lacrosse All-Star and champion, according to his CBRE biography.

Goldmacher and Carcaterra didn't respond to requests for comment. 

Potential prices for SAC's key offices abroad vary. The average rent for "Grade A" office space in London's City neighborhood range from $71 to $89 a square foot, according to a third-quarter report from Cushman & Wakefield. Average luxury rents in Hong Kong are around $103 a square foot, according to the same report.

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