Glazer Capital

Glazer Capital

Paul Glazer founded Glazer Capital in 1998 after a tenure in risk arbitrage at CIBC Oppenheimer and Bear Stearns, launching the fund during a period of heavy deal-making that would define the late-1990s merger wave. The firm established its New York headquarters and built a concentrated team of analysts and traders dedicated solely to event-driven investing — a structure that deliberately avoided the sprawl of multi-strategy platforms. Glazer's background as a lawyer, with a JD from Harvard Law, informed the firm's legal-first approach to deal evaluation from day one. The fund runs a merger arbitrage strategy as its primary engine, committing capital across announced cash and stock mergers in North America and Europe. The portfolio also includes special situations allocations — distressed debt, spin-offs, and post-bankruptcy equities — that activate when deal flow thins. Glazer Capital has disclosed positions in transactions including Activision Blizzard's acquisition by Microsoft, VMware's takeover by Broadcom, and Twitter's take-private by Elon Musk, each representing the kind of complex, often contested deals where regulatory risk creates the mispricing the firm targets. The firm participates directly, avoiding the fund-of-funds layering that dilutes returns in larger institutional event-driven vehicles. Glazer Capital runs a lean operation with a tight partnership structure typical of specialist hedge funds. Team size and precise deployment capacity remain undisclosed, though regulatory filings show the firm manages concentrated public equity portfolios concentrated in the merger arbitrage and special situations space. Paul Glazer remains the sole public face and key decision-maker, a continuity of leadership that eliminates the succession noise common at founder-led firms entering their third decade. May 2024: Regulatory filings showed the firm maintained positions in several pending deals including Capri Holdings and US Steel, reflecting continued conviction in merger arbitrage amid heightened antitrust scrutiny in Washington. Unlike multi-strategy funds that blend merger arbitrage into a broader risk book, Glazer Capital exists as a pure-play event-driven vehicle — an architectural constraint that forces discipline in dry spells and prevents the style drift that diluted returns at larger competitors. When deal volume contracts, the firm does not pivot to volatility trading or macro overlays; it sizes down or shifts to the special situations book. This mandate purity has attracted capital from allocators who want true event-driven exposure without the portfolio pollution of a multi-strat commingled fund.