Hedge funds still bent on going public?

Och-Ziff, a hedge fund firm founded by an ex-Goldman Sachs employee among others, seems to be the first pure U.S.-based hedge fund to file for an initial public offering. The others, like Fortress, had private equity units. GLG Partners, a European hedge fund power, announced a merger with a U.S.-based blank-check company. This will be another master limited partnership deal along the lines of the Blackstone Group IPO. So what to make of this? It may be that firms are not all that fazed by the prospect of additional taxes or moves to limit the ability of funds to take advantage of off-shore tax havens. Och-Ziff has about $1.8 billion in deferred income offshore. So it may be that the expected train of hedge funds to file for offerings will continue unabated.

For more:
- here's the article from the New York Times