Tiger Consumer Management, one of the original Tiger Seeds, is shutting down.
The hedge fund, launched in 2000 by Patrick McCormack and backed by Julian Robertson Jr.’s Tiger Management Corp, was managing $2.2 billion at the end of 2013. By the end of last year its U.S. stock portfolio had nearly $1.4 billion.
Interestingly, at year-end, Lone Juniper, a fund of hedge funds managed by Stephen Mandel Jr.’s Lone Pine Capital, redeemed its investment from Tiger Consumer Partners, according to its fourth-quarter investor letter obtained by Alpha. Lone Pine did not provide any explanation for the decision.
In a letter to clients, McCormack said he is shuttering the fund “to spend more time with my family” and will be returning capital on March 31. The fund gained 4.6 percent in February and was up 3.9 percent for the year to date, net of fees.
McCormack, who works out of Tiger Management’s offices at 101 Park Avenue, one block south of New York’s Grand Central Station, is the latest hedge fund manager with roots to Robertson to shut down in recent years and the second in that initial class of Seeds.
In 2012, Bill Hwang, who was also one of the original Tiger Seeds, closed Tiger Asia amid investigations into insider trading. Early last year Scout Capital Management, headed by Adam Weiss and James Crichton, shuttered its $5 billion hedge fund firm after 15 years of operation, while Joho Capital founder Robert Karr decided to return all outside money to investors after 17 years.
McCormack ran one of the original hedge funds seeded by Robertson after the legendary investor shut down his own hedge fund in 2000. Other Tiger Seeds included Charles (Chase) Coleman III of Tiger Global Management, who called his fund Tiger Technology Management at the time. Coleman, of course, has emerged as one of the elite of the new generation of hedge fund managers.
Prior to launching his fund, McCormack was a managing director and consumer group head at Tiger Management. Before that, he spent 12 years as a retail analyst, first at Alex. Brown and then at Dean Witter.
“My fund is a stock picker’s fund,” McCormack told me in late 2002. “The direction of the stock market or retail stocks does not influence what I do. What does is the performance of my longs and the performance of my shorts.”
That performance probably explains why he is shuttering Tiger Consumer.