In 1978, Robertson and his wife, Josie, moved to New Zealand, where he planned to write a novel. After six months, he concluded that he was better at investing than he was at writing and returned to New York, where he founded Tiger Management with a former Kidder Peabody colleague, Thorpe McKenzie. (McKenzie departed Tiger in 1982.)
Tiger Name
The Tiger name, Strachman wrote, was inspired by Robertson’s habit of calling people “Tiger” if he couldn’t remember their name. By 1991, the firm managed $1 billion in assets.
In addition to his hedge-fund career, Robertson ran the Tiger Foundation to support low-income New Yorkers and their families. Since its inception in 1989, it has provided more than $250 million in grants to help schools, employment training programs and childhood education, according to its website.
After closing his hedge fund, Robertson transformed Tiger Management into a firm that seeded many young managers, giving them capital in exchange for a share of their profits. He was through with the stressful job of managing client money.
“I didn’t want my obituary to be, ‘He died getting a quote on the yen,’” Robertson said in a 2013 interview with the Australian Financial Review.
Spending part of each year in New Zealand, Robertson owned wineries as well as several golf resorts in the South Pacific nation.
Robertson’s wife, the former Josephine Tucker, who was known as Josie, died of breast cancer in 2010. They had three sons: Julian III, known as Jay, who managed his father’s properties in New Zealand; Alexander, who became president of Tiger’s seeding business; and Spencer, who worked at the Tiger Foundation before founding Pave charter schools.
--With assistance from Max Abelson.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.