Mason Capital Management

Mason Capital Management

Ken Garschina and Michael Martino founded Mason Capital Management in 2000 after departing their roles at Gruss & Co., where they managed the firm's risk arbitrage and special situations book. The firm launched during the aftermath of the dot-com crash, a period that stressed many hedge funds but created abundant dislocation opportunities for the strategy they intended to pursue. Mason's roots are in the risk-arbitrage tradition — merger arbitrage, spin-offs, restructurings — but the principals structured the firm to take concentrated, high-conviction positions rather than running a diversified book of small spreads. Mason's strategy centers on event-driven and special situations investing across the capital structure, with a particular emphasis on corporate transformations that the market misprices because of forced selling, complexity, or short-termism. The firm targets announced mergers, spin-offs, recapitalizations, post-reorganization equities, and holding company structure trades. Unlike peers who operate large teams of sector analysts, Mason historically has run a lean investment staff, allowing the principals to concentrate capital in their best ideas. The firm invests primarily in North America and Europe, and its mandate spans equity and debt instruments. Known public positions have included stakes in companies undergoing major corporate actions, though Mason does not routinely publicize its portfolio holdings. Mason Capital Management operates from New York, with additional offices in Houston and El Segundo, reflecting an interest in energy and West Coast situations. The firm does not disclose assets under management. In 2016, Mason returned capital to outside investors and converted to a family office structure managing principally partner capital, a significant operational shift that reduced its public footprint (per Bloomberg, 2016). This move aligned with a broader trend among hedge fund managers who found permanent capital more compatible with deep-value, event-driven strategies that can require patience through volatile mark-to-market periods. Mason's structural differentiator is its post-2016 conversion to a family office, which eliminated redemption risk and allowed the firm to hold positions through prolonged uncertainty without catering to quarterly liquidity demands. That architecture — a lean team, concentrated book, and permanent capital base — positions Mason closer to a proprietary investment partnership than a traditional asset gatherer, a model rarely replicated with the same discipline by firms that have scaled for fee revenue.