Billionaire Alan Howard Shops His Own Crypto Stakes to Grow Brevan Howard Digital

Olga Kharif and Nishant Kumar, Bloomberg News

Billionaire Alan Howard, co-founder of Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP, at the company's offices in London, U.K., on Friday, Jan. 22, 2021. Aron Landy, who replaced billionaire Alan Howard at the helm of Brevan Howard just over a year ago, is shifting the famed macro investing firm away from being a founder-led hedge fund toward a broader financial-services operation, readying it to survive beyond the man whose name is above the door. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Alan Howard has put a handful of his personal stakes in crypto companies up for sale, with plans of reinvesting any proceeds into Brevan Howard Digital, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Howard, who co-founded Brevan Howard Asset Management, is shopping several of his personal crypto-company stakes including in custodian Copper.co and broker Bitpanda, said one of the people, who requested anonymity because the matter hasn’t been made public. If he gets acceptable offers, Howard plans to reinvest the proceeds into Brevan Howard’s digital-asset division.

The sizes of the stakes or their estimated potential values haven’t been disclosed. A representative for Howard and Brevan Howard Digital declined to comment.

Brevan Howard Digital is planning to add more capital to its existing strategies, and to launch new asset-management products and services in the coming months, according to another person who asked for anonymity because the company’s plans haven’t been made public. The digital-asset division currently has 40 staffers.

Brevan is doubling down on crypto as it’s been seeing a resurgence in interest and liquidity thanks in part to the launch of US exchange-traded funds investing directly in Bitcoin. A related spike in volatility is making the market — and particularly major coins like Bitcoin and Ether — more attractive to traders and investors.

While frequent booms and busts in cryptocurrencies continue to draw fans and critics to the asset class, Brevan Howard and Alan Howard have been among early adopters. Howard has allocated capital across the digital-assets sector for more than seven years.

Brevan Howard is best known for running macro trading strategies, and it launched BH Digital in the spring of 2022. Its Brevan Howard Digital Multi-Strategy Fund, which focuses on directional and relative value trading of liquid assets, as well as venture capital investments across the digital asset space, started in March 2022 and is up 12% since then, Bloomberg has reported previously.

The Jersey, Channel Islands-based investment firm manages about $36 billion.

The personal investments Alan Howard is shopping around were made before Digital was started, according to a person familiar with the situation. Copper provides custody, prime services and collateral management for digital assets. The company had a loss at the end of 2022, per a filing from September of last year. The company raised a funding round in 2022.

Last year, Bitpanda split into two companies — a crypto exchange and a broker — and the former raised a fresh round of funding. Alan Howard is selling his stake in the broker, one person said.

--With assistance from Emily Nicolle and Hannah Miller.