Julian Robertson, investor, 1932-2022

{"text":[[{"start":18.02,"text":"Julian Robertson took a deceptively simple approach to investing: own the best companies and bet against the worst ones. "},{"start":24.587,"text":"To succeed in the investment world means being right on more occasions than you are wrong. "},{"start":29.267,"text":"And for most of Robertson’s time running Tiger Management — the hedge fund firm he founded in 1980 — he was right. "}],[{"start":36.53,"text":"Robertson, who has died aged 90, was an investment industry giant who spawned a dynasty of hedge fund managers known as the “Tiger cubs”. "}],[{"start":44.63,"text":"Born in North Carolina in 1932, Robertson served as an officer in the US Navy after university. "},{"start":51.097,"text":"In 1957, he joined Kidder, Peabody & Co, an American securities firm, as a sales trainee, where he befriended the son-in-law of Alfred Winslow Jones, the intellectual father of the hedge fund industry. "},{"start":63.589,"text":"This would lay the foundations for Tiger’s investment approach. "}],[{"start":67.82000000000001,"text":"In 1978, Robertson moved to New Zealand intending to write a novel but soon returned to New York. "},{"start":74.049,"text":"Aged 48, he co-founded Tiger, named after his tendency to call people “Tiger” when he could not remember their name. "},{"start":80.629,"text":"Launched with initial capital of $8mn, it grew to over $21bn at its peak. "},{"start":86.29700000000001,"text":"Over its two decades, the fund delivered average annual returns of more than 25 per cent, and beat the S&P 500 in 14 of the years. "}],[{"start":95.5,"text":"Tall, slender and gregarious, Robertson dressed in Savile Row suits, spoke with a Carolina drawl and wore his sharp intellect casually. "},{"start":103.617,"text":"“He was a charmer in a southern way, a networker in a New York way,” writes Sebastian Mallaby in his book More Money Than God. "},{"start":110.397,"text":"“He was a guy’s guy, a jock’s jock, and he hired in his own image. ”"}],[{"start":114.93,"text":"The typical Tiger analyst was competitive, curious, extroverted — and male. "},{"start":120.272,"text":"Being on Robertson’s team “was like the Navy Seals,” recalls Tiger cub Philippe Laffont, who went on to found Coatue Management. "},{"start":127.33900000000001,"text":"Every morning at 6am sharp, Robertson rang the trading desk to check in on performance. "},{"start":132.419,"text":"Analysts were interrogated on investments with their boss pouncing on a rogue decimal place or a wrong number. "},{"start":138.09900000000002,"text":"Robertson would challenge traders to an exercise bike race in the gym and fly them to outward bound retreats in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains in his private plane. "},{"start":146.229,"text":"The women Tiger employed in support roles “looked like supermodels” recalls one visitor. "}],[{"start":151.92000000000002,"text":"Robertson enjoyed learning from young people. "},{"start":154.799,"text":"He was unfamiliar with the market for credit default swaps until one of his analysts told him about it a few years before the financial crisis. "},{"start":161.842,"text":"He decided to trade CDS and made triple digit returns in 2007-2008. "}],[{"start":167.68,"text":"Tiger’s simple investment approach belied a forensic analysis of companies and their management. "},{"start":172.809,"text":"Robertson could be short-tempered but his force of personality helped build a diverse group of investors including singer Paul Simon, writer Tom Wolfe and Blackstone founder Steve Schwarzman. "},{"start":182.56400000000002,"text":"In 1998 he even persuaded former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher to join the advisory board. "}],[{"start":189.52,"text":"Short seller Jim Chanos recalls running a short portfolio for Tiger in the nineties and being regularly summoned to the firm’s 101 Park Avenue headquarters to defend his ideas. "},{"start":199.47400000000002,"text":"After the first lunch, Robertson walked Chanos to the lift. "},{"start":203.029,"text":"“Jim, that was great and thank you for coming over,” he said. "},{"start":206.63400000000001,"text":"“Also, please cover that short” — ie close out the investment. "}],[{"start":211.08,"text":"Tiger’s legacy is as much the success of Robertson’s protégées — among them Laffont, Chase Coleman, John Griffin, Lee Ainslie, Steve Mandel and Andreas Halvorsen — as it is his own track record. "},{"start":222.92200000000003,"text":"Almost 200 hedge fund firms can trace their origins back to Tiger Management, including Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management, which blew up spectacularly in 2021. "}],[{"start":233.67000000000002,"text":"Robertson, who is survived by three sons and nine grandchildren, gave over $2bn to charity, and was among the early signatories to the Giving Pledge. "},{"start":242.649,"text":"“When Julian got a philanthropic recommendation from someone he trusted, he immediately wrote a cheque that always involved a lot of zeros,” Warren Buffett, who co-created the Giving Pledge, told the FT. "},{"start":253.454,"text":"“He never wanted a word of recognition or thanks. ”"}],[{"start":256.65000000000003,"text":"As Tiger grew, it expanded beyond its core expertise in US equities into government bonds, commodities and currencies. "},{"start":264.004,"text":"Some of the drivers of Robertson’s success — hefty bets with unshakeable conviction — were eventually his undoing. "},{"start":270.28400000000005,"text":"A huge wager against the Japanese yen and a large position in airline USAir proved painful, while his refusal to embrace the dotcom boom — which he said was “unwittingly creating a Ponzi pyramid destined for collapse” — cost the fund a fifth of its value in 1999. "}],[{"start":285.79,"text":"Robertson was ultimately right about the dotcom bubble. "},{"start":289.182,"text":"But it was too late for Tiger. "},{"start":291.137,"text":"After losses and a slump in assets, the hedge fund finally returned outside investor money in 2000. "},{"start":297.10400000000004,"text":"Its charismatic founder was living proof that in the stock markets, being early is the same as being wrong. "},{"start":302.884,"text":"Harriet Agnew, Laurence Fletcher, Ortenca Aliaj and Eric Platt "}],[{"start":307.5,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/81495-1661651161.mp3"}