Morten Spenner, chief executive officer of $4.2 billion, London-based International Asset Management, was as stunned as any fund-of-hedge-funds manager when word broke that Bernard Madoff had conned this supposedly sophisticated crowd out of tens of billions of dollars.
“Weren’t we more institutional than this?” asks Spenner, voicing doubts that echoed across the fund-of-funds industry, whose image was badly damaged — both financially and reputationally — by the fiasco.
