Julian Robertson, the billionaire Tiger Management founder who became one of his generation’s most successful hedge-fund managers and a mentor to a wave of investors known as Tiger Cubs, has died. He was 90.
He died at his home in Manhattan from cardiac complications, according to Fraser Seitel, a longtime spokesman for Robertson.
The North Carolina-born investor started New York-based Tiger Management in 1980 with $8.8 million. He was 48 at the time, relatively old to be launching his own firm. By mid-1998, assets had soared to about $22 billion on the back of annual returns averaging 32%, earning him a reputation on par with those of industry peers George Soros and Michael Steinhardt.
“If I had had to give my own money to any of them, I would have given it to Robertson,” investor Jim Chanos said in an interview for “More Money Than God,” a 2010 book on hedge funds by Sebastian Mallaby. “I knew that he knew stocks better than anyone.”
Robertson had an estimated net worth of $4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Known for his strength of personality and extensive network of advisers, Robertson instilled in his traders his keys to success, Mallaby wrote. They included managing holdings aggressively, removing good companies to make room for better ones, not risking more than 5% of capital on one bet and keeping the faith through bad times.
Robertson, who had started out primarily as a stock picker, began ramping up bets in bonds and foreign exchange in the 1990s, veering into the territory of macro fund managers, so called because they wager on macroeconomic trends that drive fluctuations in interest rates and currencies.
A wrong-way bet on the yen in 1998 sent investors fleeing from Tiger. In March 2000, Robertson announced that he was closing his six Tiger funds, after watching assets dwindle to $6 billion from $21 billion in 18 months because of losses and investor withdrawals.
‘Manic Periods’
“There is no point in subjecting our investors to risk in a market which I frankly do not understand,” he wrote in a letter to investors. “We have seen manic periods like this before and I remain confident that despite the current disfavor in which it is held, value investing remains the best course.”
Robertson’s firm spawned dozens of “cubs” -- former employees who learned the trade at Tiger before branching out on their own. His alumni formed a new generation of star investors, including Chase Coleman, John Griffin, Lee Ainslie, Andreas Halvorsen and Stephen Mandel. After Robertson closed down Tiger, he also seeded many young managers, giving them capital in exchange for a share of their profits.