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| 25. Jeffrey Ubben / $175 million | ||
| Title: Co-founder, chief executive officer and chief investment officer Firm: ValueAct Capital (San Francisco) Age: 53 2014 Rank: No. 25 2014 Earnings: $175 million 2013 Rank: Did not qualify Years on list: 2 | Source of 2014 earnings: Microsoft, Adobe Systems, Valeant Pharmaceuticals Education: MBA, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University BA Duke University, 1983 | |
Don’t call ValueAct Capital’s Jeffrey Ubben an activist investor — or, at least, don’t include him in the usual cast of activists. The San Francisco–based hedge fund manager does not quickly push companies to break up or urge them to seek buyers. Rather, Ubben considers himself to be more of a long-term investor who works closely with management to build value. Ubben, 53, who sits on the board of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, made his initial investment in the specialty drugmaker nine years ago and has a cost basis of $7 a share; today Valeant is trading above $200 a share. Meanwhile, two thirds of his firm’s assets are locked up for three or five years. ValueAct entices investors into the longer lockup with lower management fees and hurdle rates. The firm does not receive a performance fee until the end of the lockup period. Investors seem to like this model: ValueAct manages more than $16.8 billion, triple the $5.2 billion it managed at the end of 2010. Last year Ubben’s ValueAct Capital was up 13 percent, driven by gains from Adobe Systems — another longtime holding — Microsoft Corp. and Valeant, allowing Ubben to qualify for the Rich List for the second time. He attributes his interest in finance to his father, Timothy Ubben, who co-founded Lincoln Capital Management, an investment management firm that once hit $50 billion in assets. Before founding ValueAct in 2000, the younger Ubben spent more than five years as a managing partner at private equity firm Blum Capital Partners and eight years at Fidelity Investments, where he managed the Fidelity Value Fund.
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