Hamptons Hedges Hullabaloo

Being aggressive with a hedge fund is one thing.

Being aggressive with a hedge is something else entirely.

That, at least, seems to be Jim Chanos's take. Chanos, president of the short-selling Kynikos Associates hedge fund, broadcast an email to some friends yesterday, complaining about the guy living next to his beach house.

This being East Hampton, the neighbor was not just some guy, but Marc Spilker, a managing director of Goldman Sachs.

Chanos complained that Spilker had sent over a work crew--complete with an earthmover--to tear down some hedges on Chanos's property to create a wider beach access path. He included a photo of the carnage (above) with his email.

Spilker, who lives at 86 Further Lane (one of the area's ritziest blocks with residents including Jann Wenner, Jerry Seinfeld and Bruce Wasserstein), had told Chanos that the four-foot wide beach path just wasn't wide enough.

After about an hour, the East Hampton police--summoned by an irate Chanos--stopped the work crew.

"My outrage over this arbitrary and unilateral course of action is probably only exceeded by Mr/Mrs Spilker's sense of entitlement that the four-foot wide path to the beach (and specified in the local easement papers) 'was just not wide enough for us' as he said when first broaching the subject of arbitrarily widening a path that was 'in compliance' with the local zoning," Chanos wrote in his email, which he cc'ed to a host of Goldman executives.

The outraged hedge-fund-running hedge owner finished off by archly adding: "I hope this is not a harbinger of how other Goldman senior executives may act when the markets become 'just not lucrative enough for us!'"

Chanos, whose firm has more than $1 billion in assets, did not respond to an email seeking comment, and a captain in the police department did not return a phone call.

A Goldman Sachs representative said Spilker declined to comment.

by Deborah Schoeneman

Condé Nast Portfolio contributor Deborah Schoeneman, who is also editor in chief of Hampton Style, reports on executives in the Hamptons.