Long-Term opened for business at the end of February 1994. Meriwether, Rosenfeld, Hawkins, and Leahy celebrated by purchasing a shipment of fine Burgundies ample enough to last for years. In addition to its eleven partners, the fund had about thirty traders and clerks and $10 million worth of SPARC workstations, the powerful Sun Microsystems machines favored by traders and engineers. Long-Term’s fund-raising blitz had netted $1.25 billion—well short of J.M.’s goal but still the largest start-up ever.

