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Company type | Limited Partnership |
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Industry | Hedge funds [1] |
Founded | June 15, 1998 [2] [1] |
Headquarters | , |
AUM | US$12.1 billion (2018) |
Website | www |
Highfields Capital Management LP is a hedge fund founded in 1998 which had assets of $12.1 billion in 2018. [3] [4] The annualized net returns during the firm's first 20 years were more than 10%. [5]
Richard Grubman and Jonathon Jacobson met at an investment lunch in New York City in the early ‘90s and started a friendship. In 1998, they opened Highfields Capital Management LP together in Boston, Massachusetts. [6]
Highfields has invested in publicly traded equities and private companies like Harry & David, Michaels, Genworth Financial, Microsoft [7] and SLM Corporation; [8] and other investments including reinsurance sidecars. Grubman and Jacobson gained attention and a large payoff when they bet against Enron before the 2001 bankruptcy. [9] In February 2012, Highfields called for management change at CoreLogic, [10] in which it had a 7.65% stake. [11]
In 2010, Highfields was listed as having $10 billion of assets on January 1, 2010, 30th in The Hedge Fund Journal Top 50, up from $9.3 billion on July 1, 2009 and up from a 38th-place ranking in 2008. [12]
In 2013, Highfields returned $2 billion to clients. As Jacobson wrote to investors, "we would rather be slightly smaller and generate better [returns]." [13]
In October of 2018, Highfields announced in a letter that they would return all outside capital [14] and would convert into a family office. [15] In a third quarter letter to investors, Jacobson wrote, “Done correctly, money management is an all-consuming, 24/7 pursuit… After three-and-a-half decades of sitting in front of a screen, I realized I am ready for a change." [16]
Over the 20 years between 1998 and 2018, Highfields only lost money in two years: 2002 and 2008. [9]
Richard Grubman and Jonathon Jacobson co-founded Highfields Capital Management LP in 1998. [12]
Grubman retired in August 2010; Jacobson remains a principal of the firm. [17]
Jacobson is an undergraduate alumnus of Wharton School in finance and has an MBA from Harvard Business School. [11] After working as an options trader and at Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, he joined Harvard Management Company in 1990. [18] In 1998 Jacobson left HMC to co-found Highfields with a third of the fund's initial $1.5 billion under management coming from HMC. [11] Bloomberg reported in 2011 that Harvard Management Company no longer invested with Highfields. [19]