| O. Andreas Halvorsen (Bloomberg) |
The person who leads Viking Global Investors’ telecommunications, media and technology (TMT) and consumer teams is no longer working for the hedge fund firm.
Paul Enright left the Greenwich, Connecticut firm on March 18, according to a letter to investors dated that day. The firm does not say why he left or why the departure was so abrupt.
Enright, who joined Viking in 2004 as an analyst, was most recently a senior portfolio manager heading up the two teams. Significantly, he was also a member of the firm’s management committee.
Like many of the long-short Tiger Cubs, those firms whose founders previously worked for Julian Robertson Jr. at Tiger Management, Viking makes a fairly big bet on TMT and Internet stocks as well as consumer stocks.
At the end of the fourth quarter, Viking’s gross exposure to consumer discretionary and consumer staples was a combined 28.8 percent in the firm’s main long-short fund, Viking Global Equities, while the net exposure was just 8.5 percent. For Viking’s long fund, simply called the Viking Long Fund, gross exposure to information technology was 29.3 percent, while net exposure was 14 percent.
Viking told clients all positions under Enright’s management were either incorporated in other portfolios or were liquidated.
“The analyst coverage of our largest TMT and Consumer positions continues uninterrupted and we retain high conviction in these investments, as expressed at our recent investor meeting,” says Viking co-founder O. Andreas Halvorsen in the brief, one-page letter.
Dan Sundheim, Viking’s chief investment officer and manager of the firm’s so-called central portfolio, is serving as the portfolio manager to the six investment professionals who had been reporting to Enright, according to the letter. Viking adds that it plans to “transition this responsibility over the next few weeks” and will update investors in the first-quarter letter.
“We have a strong team of portfolio managers and are confident in the emerging talent on our TMT and Consumer teams,” Halvorsen states. Viking declined to comment.
Viking is generally well regarded in the hedge fund community for its deep bench and ability to develop top-notch investment professionals. At year-end, the firm managed more than $33 billion.
Viking Global Equities lost 7.1 percent in February and was down 9.7 percent for the first two months of the year. Viking Long Fund dropped 5 percent in February and was down 12.2 percent for the first two months. The firm was partially hurt by Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, which was no longer among its top ten long holdings as of the end of 2015. Last year VGE returned 8.3 percent, while VLF gained 4.5 percent.
Before joining Viking, Enright spent three years at Morgan Stanley as an analyst. He earned a law degree at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University in 1998. In 1995 he graduated from the College of the Holy Cross with a BA in political science.
