His hedge fund buyers didn’t wish to take heed to him when, in 1999, Julian Robertson questioned the sanity of the costs being paid for shares in nascent web firms. So months after being berated for quarter-hour at an annual shareholders assembly on the Plaza Lodge in New York in October 1999, he started the method of closing up his store. “There isn’t a level in subjecting our buyers to threat in a market which I frankly don’t perceive,” he reportedly wrote to them in March of 2000. “After thorough consideration, I’ve determined to return all capital to our buyers, successfully bringing down the curtain on the Tiger funds.”
In April 2000, the tech market started to implode.
His good timing solely cemented the legend of Robertson, who simply handed away at age 90 of cardiac issues, based on his spokesman, however who, till he was 67, led Tiger Administration, one of many largest, highest-profile, and best-performing funds within the 70-year-old hedge fund business.
One needn’t look far to understand his lasting impression. Whereas Tiger Administration reportedly boasted common annual positive factors of greater than 30% for the 20 years it was up and working, the large spate of funding managers who lower their enamel as a part of Robertson’s 200-person crew has turn into practically as legendary. Among the many many hedge funds run by individuals who labored with Robertson — they’re famously generally known as “Tiger Cubs” — are Tiger World, Lone Pine, Coatue Administration, Viking World, D1 Capital and Pantera Capital, and that’s only a sampling.
“In a bizarre manner, Julian Robertson touches trillions of {dollars} of belongings underneath administration as a result of there are such a lot of individuals who labored for him instantly [or] not directly,” Daniel Strachman, writer of Julian Robertson: A Tiger within the Land of Bulls and Bears, informed the Monetary Occasions final 12 months.
Unsurprisingly, Robertson’s mentees converse glowingly of him, as an investor, in addition to a philanthropist. Along with Robertson’s personal household basis, and Tiger Basis, a nonprofit that claims it has supplied greater than $250 million in grants to organizations working to interrupt the cycle of poverty in New York Metropolis, Robertson in 2017 signed the Giving Pledge, which asks members to present at the least half of their wealth away.
A type of protégés is Coatue founder Philippe Laffont, who spent three years working for Robertson earlier than putting out on his personal in 1999 with a reported $45 million that, in contrast to Robertson, he promptly started plowing into tech shares. (Laffont misplaced cash on the downturn the next 12 months, however navigated his manner via it.)
Coatue — a crossover fund named after a seaside off the coast of Nantucket — has gotten squeezed once more this 12 months by the downturn in each private and non-private tech shares. Nonetheless, Coatue had grown its belongings underneath administration to almost $60 billion by the top of final 12 months, and Laffont seemingly credit Robertson for a few of that success.
“Julian was a legendary investor and a beneficiant mentor,” stated Laffont in a press release despatched to TechCrunch this morning. “He did a lot good on the earth, and so typically when no one was trying. All of us really feel lonelier with out him right here. He leaves a gorgeous legacy that so many people will proceed to hunt to stay as much as. I contemplate myself lucky to have had his friendship and mentorship in my life.”
One other of Robertson’s well-known mentees is Chase Coleman, who labored as an funding analyst at Tiger Administration for practically 4 years earlier than the hedge fund wound down. Coleman, who launched Tiger World Administration the next 12 months, in 2001, additionally credit Robertson for a lot of the profession he has loved.
In a press release despatched to TechCrunch earlier at the moment, Coleman writes: “Julian was a pioneer and a large in our business, revered as a lot for his skills as an investor as for the integrity, honesty, loyalty and competitiveness he demonstrated as a pacesetter. He made the time to be a real mentor, all the time main by instance and pushing all of us to turn into one of the best variations of ourselves. For that and for his friendship, I’m perpetually grateful. He can be dearly missed, however his impression on me and numerous others, in addition to the numerous communities he touched via his philanthropic efforts, will endure.”
Like Coatue, Tiger World is a crossover fund that has more and more invested in non-public tech firms in addition to publicly traded ones. Like Coatue, it has additionally had a relatively powerful 2022, owing to the market’s breathtaking zigs and zags. (In equity, the identical is true of many outfits, together with Viking World, whose founder, Andreas Halvorsen, as soon as traded equities at Tiger Administration and, like Laffont, struck out on his personal, with Viking, in 1999. His flagship fund is on monitor for its worst 12 months ever, Bloomberg reported final month.)
Certainly, it’s straightforward to marvel what Robertson — whose success was tied to purchasing underpriced shares with good earnings prospects — considered these cubs’ aggressive strikes into late-stage privately held tech firms, significantly on condition that a few of them have been paying any value final 12 months, and driving valuations sky excessive within the course of.
If Robertson did ever query their numerous approaches, he by no means stated so publicly. Even when Archegos Capital Administration — the household workplace of one other protégé, Invoice Hwang — all of the sudden collapsed in spectacular style final 12 months (Hwang was charged with huge fraud by the SEC in April), Robertson got here to Hwang’s protection in a uncommon interview with the FT, telling the outlet final summer time: “Invoice is an effective buddy, and I do know Invoice properly. I believe he made a mistake and I count on that he’s popping out of it and he’ll go proper on.”
