Forbes- Mark Zuckerberg is making the rounds on Wall Street and as Facebook goes public he will increasingly be confronted with the fast-money hedge funds he appears to have tried to avoid. Hedge funds will play a big role in Facebook’s stock after its initial public offering, but only one hedge fund investor has seriously benefited from the monster valuation increase of Facebook’s privately-held stock.
Christopher R. Hansen is a little-known hedge fund manager who likes to keep under the radar, but his Facebook investment is poised to make him a more high-profile player and is perhaps even helping to fuel his effort to buy a National Basketball Association team. His Valiant Capital Management, a hedge fund firm that he runs out of San Francisco, owns 36.3 million shares in Facebook, according to a Facebook filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
At $35 per share, the top range of Facebook’s IPO pricing, Valiant’s Facebook stock would be worth $1.27 billion. Valiant probably paid $500 million for the shares, maybe he paid a bit less.
