Today Hot Report

A star trader at Fortress Investment Group has received a hefty $300 million share grant from the publicly-traded hedge fund and private equity firm, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The move puts Adam Levinson, a 38-year-old trader who is also the chief investment officer of one the firm’s main funds, among the firm’s five other controlling shareholders, who together hold some $3 billion of company stock, The Journal said.

The Journal noted that Citigroup Inc. analyst Prashant Bhatia took a dim view of the share grant, saying in a research note Thursday that the move hurts existing shareholders by increasing the number of shares outstanding by 7 percent.

“We can’t rule out additional dilutive share grants to other senior employees down the road,” The Journal cited the note as saying.

The grant comes as Fortress, the first of the big American alternative asset managers to go public, reported $58 million in second-quarter pre-tax earnings last week. The figure represented a 59 percent drop from last year, as the firm pulled in far less new capital.

The stocks of publicly traded alternative-asset managers have been hammered hard over the past year, as firms like Fortress and the Blackstone Group have been battered by the credit market tumult.