Barton Biggs

Managing Partner 
Traxis Partners; died in July 2012 at the age of 79

Barton Biggs, was born in New York City. His father was executive vice president and chief investment officer of the Bank of New York and chairman of the Brookings Institute in Washington. Barton graduated from the Lawrenceville School and then Yale University where he majored in English and creative writing and played varsity soccer and rugby. After three years as an infantry officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and a brief fling with teaching, he went to Wall Street as an analyst. Along the way he graduated from the Stern School of Business at New York University earning an MBA With Distinction.

In 1965 he co-founded Fairfield Partners, one of the first hedge funds, and then in 1973 after receiving an offer that was hard to refuse, joined Morgan Stanley as the first partner to be brought in directly from outside the firm. He formed the firm’s research department and was its strategist. At various times he was ranked as the number one U.S. strategist by The Institutional Investor poll, and from 1996 to 2003 was voted the top global strategist. He also formed the investment management division (MSIM) and served as its chairman until his retirement in 2003. In the mid 1990s MSIM was annually adding more new institutional accounts than any of its competitors. At Morgan Stanley, Barton was also a member of the five man executive committee that ran Morgan Stanley and on its board of directors until its merger with Dean Witter in 1996.

In June 2003 Barton left Morgan Stanley with two colleagues, Madhav Dhar and Cyril Moulle-Berteaux, and formed Traxis Partners. He remained a consultant to Morgan Stanley, and Morgan Stanley owned 19.9% of Traxis. He published Hedge Hogging in 2005, Wealth War & Wisdom in 2008, and A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp in 2010. He had three children and nine grand children. He was the chairman of the Riversville Foundation which funds scholarships for African Americans.