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Organization and Business	12 Months Ended
Organization and Business	Dec. 31, 2012
Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]
Organization and Business	Organization and Business Cowen Group, Inc., a Delaware corporation formed in 2009, is a diversified financial services firm and, together with its consolidated subsidiaries (collectively, “Cowen,” “Cowen Group” or the “Company”), provides alternative investment management, investment banking, research, market-making and sales and trading services through its two business segments: alternative investment and broker-dealer. The Company's alternative investment segment includes hedge funds, replication products, mutual funds, managed futures funds, funds of funds, real estate and healthcare royalty funds, offered primarily under the Ramius name. The broker-dealer segment offers research, brokerage and investment banking services to companies and institutional investor clients primarily in the healthcare, technology, media and telecommunications, consumer, aerospace and defense, industrials, real estate investment trusts ("REITs") and clean technology sectors, primarily under the Cowen name.