Steve Cohen Needs to Prove Himself to Wall Street All Over Again

There’s a low-slung glass and brick building in Stamford, Conn., steps from Long Island Sound, that once housed one of the most successful hedge funds ever. Inside, the halls are still adorned with works by Jeff Koons and Jasper Johns. The trading room—where phones blink instead of ring—is still kept at 69F to keep traders awake. And Steve Cohen still sits in the middle of it, watching the tape and making his bets.

In February the billionaire trader will begin to rebuild his firm, taking in client capital after a two-year ban from managing money for other people. It’s not a banner day for regulators, given that the government spent the better part of a decade going after Cohen. One prosecutor called his former firm, SAC Capital Advisors, a “criminal enterprise” that produced some of its returns by trading on inside information. Those returns? A stellar 30 percent a year on average from 1992 to 2013.