| Highfields Capital Management LP | |
| Foundation: | [1] [2] |
| Location City: | Boston, Massachusetts |
| Location Country: | U.S. |
| Type: | Limited Partnership |
| Industry: | Hedge funds |
| Aum: | US$10,000,000,000 (2010) |
Highfields Capital Management LP is a hedge fund founded in 1998 which had assets of $12.1 billion in 2018.[3] [4] The annualized net returns during the firm's first 20 years were more than 10%.[5]
Richard Grubman and Jonathon Jacobson met at an investment lunch in New York City in the early ‘90s and started a friendship. In 1998, they opened Highfields Capital Management LP together in Boston, Massachusetts.[6]
Highfields has invested in publicly traded equities and private companies like Harry & David, Michaels, Genworth Financial, Microsoft[7] and SLM Corporation;[8] and other investments including reinsurance sidecars. Grubman and Jacobson gained attention and a large payoff when they bet against Enron before the 2001 bankruptcy.[9] In February 2012, Highfields called for management change at CoreLogic,[10] in which it had a 7.65% stake.
In 2010, Highfields was listed as having $10 billion of assets on January 1, 2010, 30th in The Hedge Fund Journal Top 50, up from $9.3 billion on July 1, 2009 and up from a 38th-place ranking in 2008.
In 2013, Highfields returned $2 billion to clients. As Jacobson wrote to investors, "we would rather be slightly smaller and generate better [returns]."[11]
In October of 2018, Highfields announced in a letter that they would return all outside capital[12] and would convert into a family office.[13] In a third quarter letter to investors, Jacobson wrote, “Done correctly, money management is an all-consuming, 24/7 pursuit… After three-and-a-half decades of sitting in front of a screen, I realized I am ready for a change."[14]
Over the 20 years between 1998 and 2018, Highfields only lost money in two years: 2002 and 2008.
Richard Grubman and Jonathon Jacobson co-founded Highfields Capital Management LP in 1998.[15]
Grubman retired in August 2010; Jacobson remains a principal of the firm.[16]
Jacobson is an undergraduate alumnus of Wharton School in finance and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.[17] After working as an options trader and at Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, he joined Harvard Management Company in 1990.[18] In 1998 Jacobson left HMC to co-found Highfields with a third of the fund's initial $1.5 billion under management coming from HMC.[17] Bloomberg reported in 2011 that HMC no longer invested with Highfields.[19]