Report: ESL now based in Fla.

Sears Holdings Corp. Chairman Edward Lampert reportedly has relocated his ESL Investments hedge fund to Miami, with the company long based in Greenwich.

An ESL spokesman confirmed the move to the Greenwich Time, without providing additional details.

In 2004, ESL managed $9 billion in assets under management with 15 employees, according to a BusinessWeek profile of Lampert published at the time.

Under new Securities and Exchange Commission reporting rules, ESL had $10.6 billion in assets under management as of earlier this year, making it the seventh largest hedge fund in Fairfield County.

It marks a major blow to Fairfield County”™s and Connecticut”™s reputation as a hotbed for hedge funds, coming in the wake of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy”™s income and inheritance tax hikes of 2011.

A Yale University alumnus, Lampert began his career at Goldman Sachs under Robert Rubin, then launched ESL in 1988. In 2003, he was kidnapped at gunpoint in ESL”™s Greenwich parking lot, and freed two days later on a promise to pay his captors an after-the-fact ransom, with the perpetrators subsequently arrested.