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| 12. Daniel Sundheim / $280 million | ||
| Title: Chief investment officerFirm: Viking Global Investors (Greenwich, Connecticut)Age: 392015 Rank: No. 122015 Earnings: $280 million2014 Rank: No. 152014 Earnings: $275 millionYears on list: 2 | Source of 2015 earnings: Shorts and longs, including Allergan, Alphabet, Amazon.com and BroadcomEducation: BA in economics, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, 1999 | |
Behind every great hedge fund firm is a talented chief investment officer. In the case of Viking Global Investors, the distinction goes to Daniel Sundheim, 39, who joined the Greenwich, Connecticut, firm in 2002 as an analyst covering financial and business services companies. In January 2015 co-founder O. Andreas Halvorsen named Sundheim sole CIO when then–co-CIO Thomas Purcell left the firm following a six-month sabbatical. Sundheim, who qualifies for the Rich List for the second straight year, continues to vindicate his boss’s decision. In 2015, Viking Global Equities was up 8.3 percent, ranking it among the best-performing long-short hedge funds. Viking Long Fund rose 4.5 percent, while Viking Global Opportunities, a hybrid fund launched at the beginning of 2015, jumped 15.3 percent in its first year. Viking’s strong performance was driven by big gains among its shorts as well as longs such as Allergan, Alphabet (parent of Google), Amazon.com and Broadcom. The firm fared very well even though earlier in the year it had a big exposure to health care stocks, especially drug stocks, including Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, the controversial drug giant whose stock surged through early August and then collapsed. Viking Global Equities’ net exposure to the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries was shaved from 21.3 percent entering 2015 to 8.7 percent by year-end. Last year Sundheim and wife, Brett, marked his Rich List debut by shelling out $28.5 million for a nine-room apartment on the 15th floor of 778 Park Avenue, acquired from the estate of onetime ABC network honcho Roone Arledge. The couple has become more visible in the art scene, helping to support a Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art and a Christopher Wool exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
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