Ron Pollack, who began his career as a short seller in 1987 as a senior analyst at Feshbach Brothers and subsequently ran the Dancing Bear short fund for his own firm, Bulldog Capital Management, has returned to the industry after a four-year break with the launch of Tampa, Florida-based Mascot Capital Management.

Pollack, who will be the general partner of a new Dancing Bear Fund, has assembled a team including Barry Bailey, a short-selling analyst and senior managing director at Bear Stearns until his retirement in 2005, and Tod Dodge, a research sales trader at Credit Suisse First Boston, Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette and Hambrecht & Quist.

The new Dancing Bear will be a consistently net short fund, with a consistently negative beta coefficient, using a dynamic mix of opportunistic trading, fundamental-based stock picking and sector rotation.

The fund will use limited leverage and will make long-side investments to make money as well as to provide a hedge to the portfolio. It is intended to have a diversified portfolio of sectors and stocks, but may opportunistically over-weight best ideas and sectors.

Pollack, Mascot's founder, chief investment officer and portfolio manager, was chief investment officer and portfolio manager of Bulldog Capital Management from its launch in 1992.

Bulldog, which had more than USD1bn in assets under management by 2000, merged two years later with consulting and investment management company Monitor Group, and Pollack left the hedge fund business in 2004, subsequently becoming involved in property development. Before joining Feshbach in 1987 as a senior analyst and limited partner, he was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Drexel Burnham Lambert.