John Meriwether

John William Meriwether (born August 10, 1947) is an American hedge fund executive.

Meriwether earned an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and an MBA degree from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

After graduation, Meriwether moved to New York City, where he worked as a bond trader at Salomon Brothers. At Salomon, Meriwether rose to become the head of the domestic fixed income arbitrage group in the early 1980s and vice-chairman of the company in 1988. In 1991, Salomon was caught in a Treasury securities trading scandal perpetrated by a Meriwether subordinate, Paul Mozer. Meriwether was assessed $50,000 in civil penalties.

Meriwether founded the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1994. Long-Term Capital Management collapsed in 1998. The books When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management and Inventing Money: The Story of Long-Term Capital Management and the Legends Behind It detail the events leading up to and following Long-Term Capital Management's demise.

A year after LTCM's collapse, in 1999, Meriwether founded JWM Partners LLC. The Greenwich, Connecticut hedge fund opened with $250 million under management in 1999 and by 2007 had approximately $3 billion. The Financial crisis of 2007-2009 badly battered Meriwether's firm. From September 2007 to February 2009, his main fund lost 44 percent. On July 8, 2009, Meriwether closed the fund. In a Bloomberg story on the closing of JWM Partners Tammer Kamel, an investment adviser, said that, "For many investors, John Meriwether is by now just another hedge-fund manager," and that "LTCM's infamy was a big story in 1998, but the events of 2008 might finally relegate LTCM and 1998 to footnote status."

Meriwether opened his third hedge fund venture, named JM Advisors Management, also based in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 2010. The fund is expected to use similar strategies as both LTCM and JWM, namely highly leveraged "relative value arbitrage".By March 2011, however, the JM Advisors Macro Fund had raised only $28.85 million.

Meriwether has been an owner of Thoroughbred horses for a number of years and is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Racing Association (NYRA). He is best known for once saying to "bet on a horse that craps just before the race." He notably campaigned Buckhan, the winner of the 1993 Washington, D.C. International Stakes.