Head of Investor Relations at $3 Billion Hedge Fund Tells All | Capital Raising 101

Mar 11, 2026

Kate Bauman, Head of Investor Relations at Empyrean Capital Partners and former JP Morgan private bank professional. She unpacks how AUM and the 2% management fee power hedge fund economics. Short takes on how allocators evaluate funds, the five pillars of event-driven strategies, and the real-world hustle of building long-term investor relationships.

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ADVICE

Pick IR Roles By Firm Stage

Match IR title to firm size and lifecycle because responsibilities vary from jack-of-all-trades at startups to specialized IR, sales, and client service at larger firms.
Expect roles to include fundraising, PM recruitment, client service, and branding depending on scale.

INSIGHT

IR Should Think Like An Allocator

The best IR professionals think like allocators and position the fund around portfolio role and risk-return characteristics.
Explain how your strategy provides uncorrelated or downside-protecting returns and why investors should allocate to you.

ADVICE

Lead With Risk Adjusted Performance

Use both absolute and risk-adjusted metrics when pitching: multi-year annualized returns plus Greeks like beta, volatility, and Sharpe.
Emphasize alpha as the skill-generated incremental return and contrast it with cheap beta alternatives (ETFs).

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In this episode, we sit down with Kate Baumann, Head of Investor Relations at Empyrean Capital Partners (a $3 billion event-driven, multi-strategy hedge fund), LIVE from iConnections in Miami.

Here's the thing nobody tells you: the amount of money a hedge fund manages — its AUM — is the single biggest driver of how much everyone at that fund gets paid. The 2% management fee is what funds the operation, allows traders to generate good returns (alpha) which then can pay top talent, and creates the flywheel that attracts more capital and better talent.

Kate explains exactly how that fundraising engine works, from identifying which allocators (pensions, endowments, sovereign wealth funds) are the right fit, to running competitive analysis against peer funds, to crafting the narrative that gets an investment committee to say yes. She also gets into the five pillars of Empyrean's event-driven strategy, transactional, structural, stress/distressed, and legal/regulatory, and why all five are firing right now.

She also gets real about what it takes to be successful. This isn't IR at a corporate .Kate talks about what it takes to raise money, to build the relationships, travel every other week, and why wining and dining (what may have worked in the 1990s.) doesn't work now.

Whether you're thinking about a career in investor relations, trying to understand how hedge funds actually raise capital, or just want to know what happens behind the scenes at these huge hedge fund conferences, this one's for you. Kate shares her path from JP Morgan's private bank during the financial crisis to running IR at a multi-billion dollar fund, her advice for young people breaking in, and why the best IR professionals think like allocators, talk like PMs, and build relationships that compound over decades — not transactions.

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