Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Daniel Och, chief executive officer of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, spent about $7 million buying shares over the past three months in the hedge fund firm he founded.

Och bought 1.6 million shares between Nov. 13 and Feb. 2, at prices ranging from $3.89 to $4.98 a share, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The purchase of the 2.1 percent stake in Och-Ziff makes him the firm’s 10th-largest investor, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Och, 48, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader, started the New York-based hedge fund with Ziff Brothers Investments LLC in 1994. The firm sold 36 million shares in an initial public offering in November 2007 for $32 each. The stock fell 80 percent in 2008 as hedge funds posted their biggest losses in nearly two decades and Och-Ziff’s OZ Master Fund lost almost 16 percent.

The company managed $22.3 billion as of Feb. 1, according to a document filed with the SEC earlier this month. Its flagship fund gained 3.2 percent in January, beating the 1.1 percent increase in the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index that month.

Hedge funds are private, largely unregulated pools of capital whose managers can buy or sell any assets, bet on falling as well as rising asset prices, and participate substantially in profits from money invested.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Cahill in London at tcahill@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 4, 2009 05:09 EST