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Och Ð'- Ziff Going Public:

The proceeds from the IPO will be used by Och-Ziff to buy ownership interests in the firm held by various parties, including 18 partners

The partners have pledged to pay taxes on the funds, and then put the money they receive back into Och-Ziff's hedge funds for at least five years. But Och-Ziff is going to borrow $750 million before the offering and distribute that money to its investors, likely leading to a windfall for top executives.

At the same time, the firms are taking steps to try to keep a lid on the power that shareholders will have. The stock that will be sold will be Class-A shares, which will have limited say in the Och-Ziff's operations as compared with the Class-B shares, which will be held by existing owners and executives. For the first quarter ended March 31, Och-Ziff reported net income of $85.2 million, up from $45.9 million in the 2006 comparable period. Revenue jumped to $284.4 million from $198.8 million.

The New York-based firm, which made $85 million on revenue of $284 million during the first quarter, plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "OZM."

With about $26.8 billion in assets, Och-Ziff is one of the world's biggest hedge-fund businesses. It plans to use the IPO proceeds to expand further overseas in search of new strategies and investors, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission

Founder Daniel Och, who worked in Goldman Sachs's influential risk-arbitrage group in the 1980s, and 17 other Och-Ziff partners will put all of their proceeds from the IPO into the firm's funds to help them branch out in new areas, Och-Ziff said in the filing.

Och-Ziff also said that before the IPO it plans to borrow $750 million and give