Tudor clients take bite out of Raptor

Tudor Investment Corp. clients have pulled more than $1 billion from its Raptor hedge fund after it fell 8.5% this year, mostly U.S. equities, according to a Bloomberg report. Raptor, which James Pallotta runs from Boston, had about $8 billion in assets before the withdrawals. The fund fell 3.1% in November. Tudor’s largest fund, BVI, rose about 5.5% through November, about have the industry average. Paul Tudor Jones, who founded the Greenwich, Conn.-based firm in 1980, considered reducing BVI’s $10 billion in assets to help improve performance, according to an Oct. 25 letter written to clients cited in the report. ``There is an intense focus here on posting a better 2007 return than our current level,'' Mr. Jones wrote in the letter. The Raptor fund has posted an average annual return of 19.2% since opening in October 1993-- almost double that of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. BVI has increased 24.2% per year on average since 1986.