Some prominent investment managers are contrarian in their NCAA men's basketball tournament Final Four picks.
Steve Cohen, the billionaire head of Point72 Asset Management, thinks No. 3 seed Notre Dame will upset No. 1 Kentucky to emerge as the Midwest region winner, he told CNBC.com via a spokesman.
Cohen—who oversees about $10 billion at his Connecticut-based family office—likes more conventional teams to round out the Final Four: No. 1 Wisconsin in the West, No. 1 Villanova in the East and No. 1 Duke in the South. His alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, didn't make the tournament.
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John Brynjolfsson, head of Irvine, California-based hedge fund firm Armored Wolf, said two underdogs will make it to the semifinals in Indianapolis: No. 13 seeds Harvard and UC Irvine. The Columbia College grad, who runs $500 million in assets, also thinks Kentucky will make the Final Four, but he said the Wildcats won't win.
"As a fiduciary, I can't root for Kentucky, as that would destabilize a few bookmakers who laid out huge odds against them," Brynjolfsson joked to CNBC.com. He likes Duke to win it all.
Others are sticking with blue-chip teams. Another billionaire, private equity titan David Bonderman of TPG, thinks undefeated Kentucky will win it all. Bonderman, a University of Washington grad whose firm oversees $65 billion, also likes No. 2 Arizona, No. 1 Duke and No. 2 Virginia to make it to the Final Four.
Steve Pagliuca, managing director at $80 billion Bain Capital and co-owner of the Boston Celtics, thinks the top four teams will be Kentucky, Arizona, Virginia and Duke. A Duke alum, he likes the Blue Devils to go all the way.
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Like Pagliuca, several prominent investors picked their own alma maters to win, a move some see as a classic sentimental trap.
A case in point is billionaire hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones. He thinks his beloved No. 2 seed UVA will win the national championship. Jones' Greenwich, Connecticut-based Tudor Investment Corp. runs about $13 billion.
Jaffray Woodriff, another Virginia alum, who runs $1.2 billion hedge fund firm Quantitative Investment Management, also thinks the Cavaliers will ultimately cut down the net. QIM is based near UVA inCharlottesville, and Woodriff is a donor to the school's squash program.
Some money managers, true to their secretive nature, declined to give or did not respond to requests for comment. A few examples of those who prefer to keep their picks private include Julian Robertson of Tiger Management (a North Carolina alum); Josh Harris of Apollo Global Management (a UPenn grad and Philadelphia 76ers co-owner); and Jamie Dinan of York Capital (another UPenn alum and Milwaukee Bucks co-owner).
This article originally appeared in CNBC.
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