Not everyone soured on hedge-fund billionaire Steve Cohen after his multibillion-dollar hedge fund copped to insider trading this month.
Cohen’s frat brothers from the University of Pennsylvania chapter of Zeta Beta Tau cheered the hotshot hedgie just one day after his SAC Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to a decade of illegal trading that resulted in a record $1.2 billion fine, sources told On the Money.
On Nov. 9, current and former ZBT members got together to break ground on planned renovations and an expansion to ZBT’s four-story frat house in Philly.
The person they had to thank most of all for getting them there? “Brother Steve Cohen,” Class of ’78, sources said.
Cohen donated $2 million several years ago to the UPenn chapter, including $1 million outright and $1 million in matching funds.
At the time, the gift represented half the frat’s planned $4 million capital campaign to install new plumbing and heating in the 84-year-old brick house.
“Mr. Cohen gave the donation in April 2009,” said his spokesman Jonathan Gasthalter.
The UPenn chapter of ZBT, which markets itself as the “world’s first Jewish fraternity,” was famously expelled from campus in the late 1980s over a party that featured strippers, cucumbers and ketchup, according to Philly.com.