Louis Bacon returning hedge fund investors money after 30 years

Louis Bacon, who’s almost as famous for feuding with Canadian fashion tycoon Peter Nygard as he is for running one of the world’s most successful hedge funds, is throwing in the towel as an investor of outside capital.

Bacon’s $8.9 billion hedge fund, Moore Capital Management, will continue to manage money for its founder and his staffers, according to a Thursday letter to MCM investors.

The letter highlighted MCM’s net annualized return of 17.6 percent over the firm’s 30 years, calling it a record “we remain proud of having delivered,” and a cumulative return of more than 21,000 percent.

But it also acknowledged “disappointing results” in recent years as Bacon and Nygard, neighbors in the Bahamas, have endlessly battled each other in court and online over what started as a property dispute in 2013.

That beef quickly spiraled into a legal free-for-all, with both deep-pocketed antagonists keeping good-sized law practices and p.r. agencies in clover.

In one 2015 suit, Nygard accused Bacon of floating $50,000 worth of cocaine in the waters just off shore only to have it wash up in Bacon’s own backyard. Bacon followed up with a defamation suit accusing Nygard of masterminding a “malicious” smear campaign that linked him to the Ku Klux Klan.

The bickering has been so prolific that it produced court actions from New York to London to Los Angeles, where a former Nygard employee was accused of stealing video footage for Bacon’s benefit.

The men have each denied the other’s claims.

The litigation took its most recent turn on Nov. 15, when the Bahamas Supreme Court sentenced Nygard, 76, to 90 days in prison and fined him $150,000 over his alleged theft of confidential e-mails from a Bacon-sponsored environmental group.

The group, Save the Bays, has been at odds with Nygard since 2013, when it accused the affordable-fashion designer of illegally expanding his Lyford Cay property — without obtaining permits — by dredging around it.

Nygard, who was sentenced in absentia, also faces a penalty of $5,000 for each day he fails to comply with the court’s order, despite claiming he’s too ill to travel.

Bacon, who founded MCM with a $25,000 inheritance from his mother, said “intense competition for trading talent coupled with client pressure on fees” also played a role in his decision to stop managing money from outsiders.

“This privatization of MCM’s macro funds will allow me more personal time for a large family, philanthropic pursuits and to continue to develop a number of sports-oriented properties — all with the flexibility to ‘stay in the picture’ or not,” he said.