'Big Short' hedge fund manager Steven Eisman on indefinite leave after Gaza comments

Steven Eisman, senior portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, deleted his account on X and later wrote that a comment on attacks in Gaza was a 'mistake'. Bloomberg

Hedge fund manager Steven Eisman, best known for betting on the collapse of the US housing market, has been placed on an indefinite leave of absence by his employer Neuberger Berman after he said on social media that he was “celebrating” the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.

His firm said Mr Eisman did not speak on its behalf and called his actions “objectionable”.

He profited from the 2007 crisis in the US subprime mortgage market, which turned into a global financial crisis, by shorting the stocks of American banks. The crisis was the basis for the 2015 film The Big Short. Mr Eisman's character was played by actor Steve Carell.

The fund manager's comments on his X account, which featured the Neuberger Berman logo, were in response to a graphic post showing a burning building and people shouting in agony, apparently as a result of an Israeli attack.

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A user on the platform said the world was silent about the devastation in Gaza, to which Mr Eisman responded: “You must be kidding. We are not silent. We are celebrating.”

Mr Eisman, a senior portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, earlier deleted his account on X.

He later wrote that the post was a “mistake” and that he had meant to comment on Israel’s actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“I posted about that multiple times, one time inadvertently in response to a post referencing deaths in Gaza and having nothing to do with Lebanon,” Mr Eisman wrote.

“When this was pointed out to me, I immediately deleted my post and I regret the mistake.”

Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander and other senior figures in the Lebanese movement in an air strike on Beirut on Friday, vowing to press on with a new military campaign until it is able to secure the area around the Lebanese border.

The strike inflicted another blow on Hezbollah after two days of attacks on the group in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded, killing 37 people and wounding thousands. Those attacks were widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Mr Eisman’s leave is effective immediately, Alex Samuelson, a company representative, said on Friday.

His personal comments on social media are his alone and he does not speak for Neuberger Berman

Neuberger Berman spokesperson

“His personal comments on social media are his alone and he does not speak for Neuberger Berman,” he added.

“Even though Mr Eisman has acknowledged that he mistook the content of the post he responded to, his actions on social media were irresponsible and objectionable.”

Mr Eisman, 62, joined the company in 2014.

A Harvard lawyer by training, Mr Eisman switched to become a financial analyst at Wall Street investment bank Oppenheimer. He then moved to the Connecticut-based hedge fund FrontPoint Partners. He left FrontPoint in 2011 and set up his own fund, Emrys Partners, the following year.

He joined Neuberger after Emrys closed. The investment company currently has $481 billion of assets under management with 739 employees, according to its website.

Mr Eisman has taken a strong pro-Israel stance on X.

Earlier this week, he said that if Kamala Harris won the US presidential election and the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress, he expected the US market to go “straight down”. He has predicted that Donald Trump will win the election in November.

However, on Thursday, in a Bloomberg Television interview, he rescinded his prediction, saying he now sees the race as “a toss-up”.

With inputs from Bloomberg and Reuters