E. Lee Hennessee, who started one of the first hedge-fund advisory firms and created an industry performance index before getting ranked among New York’s 50 most-powerful women, has died. She was 64.
She was found dead Oct. 29 at her home in West Palm Beach, Florida, by her husband and business partner, Charles Gradante, according to an e-mailed statement from Chase Scott, a family spokesman. Authorities are awaiting lab results to determine the cause of death, Lori Colombino, public information officer for the West Palm Beach Police Department, said Monday by telephone.
Hennessee was chairman and managing principal of New York-based Hennessee Group, the hedge-fund research and advisory service. She discussed the industry in frequent appearances on CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg Television, and was widely quoted in the financial press.
She founded her firm in 1987 as a unit of E.F. Hutton. “When I got there, I asked, ‘Where is the hedge fund research?”’ she recounted in a 2003 interview with the Raleigh News & Observer, her hometown newspaper in North Carolina. “The answer was, ‘We don’t have any.”’ Within four months, she landed a $50 million corporate account and became one of her division’s top 10 producers, she said.
The Hennessee Hedge Fund Index, which she also created at E.F. Hutton, tracked the performance of investment managers and was published in Barron’s.
Going Independent
Hennessee, along with the advisory business, moved from E.F. Hutton, where she was a vice president, to other corporate parents, including Shearson Lehman Brothers/American Express and Republic National Bank. In 1995, Gradante joined the operation and, two years later, the couple took it independent.
As a fund of funds, Hennessee Group managed as much as $1.6 billion and helped wealthy clients choose hedge funds, which are loosely regulated investment pools open only to high-net worth individuals. The firm published a monthly hedge fund review and had offices in New York, Raleigh and Palm Beach.
In 2007, the New York Post named Hennessee to its list of the city’s 50 most powerful women.
As a woman and a southerner -- she spoke with a drawl -- Hennessee stood out in Manhattan’s financial industry. In a 2011 Forbes profile, she recounted episodes of enduring course language and sexual innuendos, which she wouldn’t tolerate.