Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – Yale University helped Christopher Hohn build one of Europe’s most successful and activist hedge funds. Now Yale’s $500 million investment and Mr. Hohn’s firm are partingcompany, according to people familiar with the matter.
It is a split between a premier institutional investor in the burgeoning hedge-fund industry and a hedge-fund manager who has made returns most investors can only dream of. Since he started Children’s Investment Fund Management (U.K.) LLP in January 2004, Mr. Hohn has more than doubled his clients’ money.
Officials at Yale, in New Haven, Conn., were concerned that the $15.2 billion endowment’s position in Mr. Hohn’s fund had grown too large, these people said. Yale was instrumental in helping found Mr. Hohn’s firm, known as TCI, with a $200 million investment after Mr. Hohn struck out on his own from New York-based Perry Capital, another hedge-fund firm.
Starting with a big commitment from Yale, one of the earliest and biggest proponents of investing in private partnerships such as hedge funds and private-equity funds, the fund got a big boost. An investment by Yale is seen as a seal of approval for a hedge-fund manager, and other big institutions often follow. Yale’s initial outlay became $500 million in just over two years, thanks to Mr. Hohn’s investments.
