| Viking Global Investors founder O. Andreas Halvorsen Photo: Bloomberg News |
Much has been made of the Tiger Cubs and Seeds who have lost money in the first quarter of the year.
However, a handful of the firms with roots in Julian Robertson’s legendary Tiger Management Corp. are actually up so far this year, with the smallest funds of the group putting up the biggest numbers.
Two of the most famous Cubs are making money so far this year, albeit modestly. O. Andreas Halvorsen’s long-short fund, Viking Global Equities, managed out of Greenwich, Connecticut–based Viking Global Investors, is still up 0.6 percent for the year despite dropping 5 percent in March. The Viking Long Fund is up 1.4 percent for the year.
Lee Ainslie’s Maverick funds, run out of Dallas-based Maverick Capital, are enjoying a similar type of year as Viking. (Ainslie is based in New York.) The Maverick Fund, the firm’s long-short equity fund, is up 0.7 percent through the first quarter, while the Maverick Long Fund is up 1.1 percent.
Tiger Global L.P., headed by Charles (Chase) Coleman and Feroz Dewan, lost 2.7 percent in March. Even so, the fund, run by New York–based Tiger Global Management, is still up 1 percent for the year.
However, lesser-known Tiger-affiliated funds are up solidly for the first three months of the year. Tosca Opportunity, the UK activist fund managed by Martin Hughes out of London-based Toscafund Asset Management, gained 3.2 percent in the first quarter.
In fact, Hughes — who previously served as head of the global financials team at Tiger Management from 1997 to 2000 — has enjoyed one of the best records in recent years among the Tiger offspring. His fund was up 56.2 percent last year and 34.1 percent in 2012. As a result, he has posted a 14.1 percent annualized return in his fund since its 2005 inception. This compares with the benchmark MSCI World Price Index’s return of 4.1 percent.
In the first quarter, Tosca Opportunity continued to benefit from the UK’s economic recovery. Last year the fund enjoyed huge gains from Redrow, a housing developer, and Regus, a global company that rents office space.
“Judging by the IMF [International Monetary Fund] UK GDP upgrades this will be a theme that runs for some years,” Hughes says in an e-mail message, referring to more bullish forecasts for the UK economy.
Robert Bishop’s Impala Asset Management is up 3.6 percent this year after gaining 16.83 percent last year. Unlike many of the other Cubs, Bishop, based in New Canaan, Connecticut, does not gravitate to the hot momentum stocks. Rather, he prefers industries tied to the overall economy, such as airlines, energy — especially oil services — and homebuilders. At year-end, Impala’s largest holdings were homebuilder NVR, Delta Air Lines, Macy’s, oil driller Helmerich & Payne and forest products giant Weyerhaeuser.
Bishop launched Impala in 2003 after spending 16 ill-fated months as George Soros’ chief investment officer. Before joining Soros, Bishop worked at Maverick. At the beginning of this year, he managed $2.22 billion.
