DUMAC, formally known as Duke Management Co., the asset manager responsible for Duke University’s $14 billion of assets, including its $7 billion endowment, has long had a reputation for investing in new and emerging hedge fund firms. As part of Durham, North Carolina–based DUMAC’s public securities investment team, Geoffrey Keegan spent considerable time working with these smaller managers. Including developing a separately managed account program specifically focused on such funds. Given his experience, it makes sense that Keegan recently launched his own firm dedicated to emerging and start-up long-short fundamental equity funds. The son of an Eastman Kodak Co. executive, Keegan lived in Rochester, New York, for much of his youth. But he was born in London, and returned there for his last three years of high school to attend the American School in London in St. John’s Wood. A true Blue Devil, he spent three years after graduation from Duke with a major in economics working for DUMAC, where he learned the ropes of asset management before earning his MBA at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Keegan, 38, then moved to Chicago for a three-year stint with alternative-investment and fund-of-funds firm Grosvenor Capital Management as a member of the arbitrage investment group. When DUMAC investment officer Neal Triplett was promoted to president and CEO in 2007, he asked Keegan to come back and join the hedge fund investment team. Keegan stayed at DUMAC for a further six and three quarter years before leaving in 2014 to form Creciente Partners Investment Management, based in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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