Daniel Loeb, the activist hedge fund manager, isn't known for his soft touch. He's made a name for himself by publicly dressing down what he believes are "bungling" and "incompetent" chief executives.

The sharp-tongued yoga-warrior apparently has no worries that shareholders might one day lob similar verbal grenades at him.

Next Monday, Loeb will be on the hot seat himself, after selling roughly $665 million in shares of a new hedge fund to the public. The listing of Third Point Offshore Investors is the first time an American single-manager hedge fund has gone public in London. But Loeb joins a growing pack of alternative investment managers seeking a more permanent and stable funding source through the public markets.

Private equity groups and hedge funds like Blackstone and Fortress Investment Group have recently had initial public offerings, while Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Och-Ziff Capital Management and the Man Group of Britain have announced plans to do the same.

What sets Loeb's offering apart is the swagger and attitude that comes with it. Since founding Third Point Capital in 1995, Loeb has become more known for his aggressive browbeating of corporate executives, competitors, and job applicants, than for his stellar returns.

A case in point: In a hiring-related email that ricocheted across the Internet in 2005, Loeb managed to offend the very people he is now wooing, complaining that "most Brits...prefer to knock back a pint at the pub and go shooting on weekends, rather than work hard."

Despite his views about the British work ethic, Loeb evidently sees something to like about London: perhaps it is the less burdensome regulatory structure and lower exchange fees there, compared with United States markets.

Loeb notes in Third Point's public filing that he is "delighted to be in the position to offer shares in Third Point Offshore Investors Limited to public investors so they can effectively gain access to our largest fund" and its "strong annual returns."

Third Point's master fund has averaged more than 23 percent in annual returns over the last ten years, according to its filing. But while activist hedge funds like Third Point may do well for shareholders, notes Professor B. Espen Eckbo, director of Dartmouth's center for corporate governance, they "may not be so good for incumbent management."

In the case of companies Loeb invests in, this may be doubly true for the sitting chief executives. In public filings over the years, he has derided the great-grandsons of one company founder as being part of the "lucky sperm club," and urged another C.E.O. to retire so he could "play tennis and hobnob" with his "fellow socialites."

Attacking the hobnobbing of the rich, in fact, is a stock theme for Loeb, who, in 2005, excoriated Salton's chief executive, Leonhard Dreimann for "hobnobbing, snacking on shrimp cocktails and sipping chilled Gewurztraminer" at the U.S. Open tennis final while his company, the maker of small kitchen appliances like the George Foreman Grill, was "on financial life support" and in "death spiral."

Irritated by the executive's $52,966 annual car allowance, Loeb added that given "Mr. Dreimann's poor management" he shouldn't have been "awarded anything more than subway tokens for his transportation needs."

More recently Loeb laid into Mark McDade, chief executive of PDL BioPharma Inc., saying he lacked "character, professionalism, and competence," then questioning if McDade could "even manage his own Microsoft Outlook inbox," much less a $2 billion biotechnology company.

"The company is being treated like McDade's personal science experiment," wrote Loeb in the April screed, adding that the "public pressure being applied by Third Point could lead to positive dramatic changes in the company."

Of course, Loeb might be just as successful if he toned it down a bit. The former C.E.O. of Potlatch Corp., Pendleton Siegel, tangled often with Loeb and wasn't very impressed. Siegel notes that after Loeb accumulated about 3 percent of the company's stock in 2003, "he called me up to see what we did."

"He had no idea," says Siegel, adding that Loeb "disrupted" quarterly calls, "was very disrespectful to directors, none of whom he knew," and that many of the corporate changes Loeb was pressing "in an over-the-top fashion, we had been working on before he even became an investor."

Steve Chercover, a D.A. Davidson & Co. senior analyst, says Loeb is the investment world's equivalent of a "punk rocker."

"He rips people a new one," says Chercover, who covers Potlatch. "It's colorful. People talk about it. And some people think that shouldn't be done in a public forum. But he's got the chops."

The intriguing question for many on Wall Street now is how Loeb will respond, if his results wane - they were 16 percent last year -- and investors choose to make similarly harsh critiques of his own management.

Loeb has done a few things to keep public shareholders happy. He is making a 5 percent investment of his own in the new fund and covering the underwriting fees. Also, the share price could have a fairly firm floor under it, since the prospectus says the fund "will consider" a share buyback should prices trade below 95 percent of the fund's net asset value.

But if investors become disgruntled with returns one day, or just decide they want Loeb to tone down his aggressive style, Loeb would suddenly have to listen to them. "What is good for the goose is good for the gander," says Chercover. "He will have to be ready to take it as well as give it. But he's got the kind of track record that, if he continues to perform the way he has, then people will be happy."

"He also has a pretty thick skin," adds Chercover. "I don't think sticks and stones will break his bones."

Kit R. Roane

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Photograph by Mark Peterson/Redux