Investors Flee from a Hedge Fund Star

After more than ten years of impressive returns, David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital Inc. has seen assets under management drop from a reported $12 billion in 2014 to about $5.5 billion, and investors are losing patience with poor performance. This according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.

After discussions with more than a dozen current and former investors and employees of Greenlight, WSJ reports that “some frustrated clients have pulled out of Greenlight over the past three years, and some others say they will exit if results don’t rebound.”

Einhorn “hasn’t clearly explained the losses,” the article says, adding that in an April investor letter he wrote, “To some extent, this quarter’s result stems from the continued extreme outperformance of growth over value.” Nor has he endeared himself to investors with his tight-lipped investing style. When returns were good, investors put up with Einhorn’s “quirks”, the article says, but as performance waned, so has their patience.

Greenlight lost more than 20% in 2015, WSJ reports, “hurt in part by a 74% collapse in shares of solar and wind producer SunEdison Inc., “one of the firm’s largest holdings at the time. The trend continued, much to the chagrin of investors, “and concern grew among investors about Mr. Einhorn’s value-oriented approach, which avoided popular tech stocks that were part of what he called a ‘bubble basket’ that he predicted would fall.”

But Einhorn, the article reports, “is showing few signs of changing his ways.”