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Hedge Fund Managers Ditch Decorum in Shouting Match Over China

EJF Capital's Friedman says the bearishness has gone overboard
MB Advisors's Berg joins with the naysayers at SALT conference

Ray Nolte, from left, Emanuel Friedman, Milton Berg, Don Brownstein and Roslyn Zhang. — Ray Nolte, from left, Emanuel Friedman, Milton Berg, Don Brownstein and Roslyn Zhang.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

By

Simone Foxman and

May 12, 2016, 6:30 AM UTC

A fiery exchange between money managers Emanuel Friedman, Milton Berg and Don Brownstein broke with the polite decorum of the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, one of the biggest annual events for the hedge fund world. That’s because the topic was China.

Friedman, co-founder of hedge fund EJF Capital, said he was reminded of overblown reactions to the late 1990s Asian financial crisis: “People said, ‘Well Korea, it’s finished, it’s collapsed. People are in the streets.”’