Biography

Joseph Jett
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Investment Officer

Although Joseph Jett may be best known today as a market commentator on the leading business shows, it was 12 years ago that he was thrust into the spotlight as the head of Government Bond Trading at GE subsidiary Kidder Peabody. Jett managed $36 Billion in assets at the firm; more than 12% of GE's total assets. Yet famed GE CEO, Jack Welch, and the entire GE staff down to Jett's immediate supervisor claimed to be unaware of Jett's trading methods.

A blue-ribbon panel of the NASD found no basis for Welch's assault against Jett and declared Jett innocent of fraud and all other allegation's leveled by GE against him. Jett's remarkable profitability stemmed from an arbitrage trade that foresaw an historic movement in the bond basis - the relation between cash bonds and the futures market after the Clinton administration halved the number of 30 year bond auctions from four to two times per year. The 30 year bonds became scarce while the bond futures took on the trading aspects of a 12 year bond. Jett bet heavy, reconstituting cash bonds from their strip component parts and shorting the bond futures. Jett's prescient call won big; generating $275MM in profits.

While at GE, Jett pioneered the use of off-balance sheet financing, a methodology of removing assets from corporate balance sheets by moving equity, liabilities or assets to the balance sheet of a special purpose vehicle. Use of off-balance sheet financing has become one of the most commonly used forms of risk-management.

Jett Capital has specific expertise in off-balance sheet securitized debt instruments such as Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). The use of CDOs to supplement second-tier equity financing has proved an ideal strategy for many of our clients.