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Having folded his eponymous hedge fund firm in 2011, Shumway is now backing several of his former employees.
Chris Shumway may have closed down his hedge fund firm, Shumway Capital Partners, nearly three years ago, but the 47-year-old did not exactly retire.
Shumway has been busy seeding other hedge funds and doing private equity deals, not to mention managing his family and foundation assets and making public and private investments. The seeding business, which is very competitive these days, involves investing a chunk of money with a fledgling firm in exchange for a piece of its equity. So Shumway is not only betting that the manager will do well, he also expects the firm to grow its business as well.
Last year was an especially good year for the four funds he has seeded, three of which were founded by Shumway alumni. Since Shumway is considered a Tiger Cub because he previously worked at Julian Robertson Jr.'s Tiger Management Corp. -- he was a senior managing director from 1992 through 1999 -- his three alumni are known as Tiger Grandcubs.
Shumway launched his Greenwich, Connecticut-based firm in 2002. At its height it managed nearly $9 billion. But after investors redeemed large amounts of money when he tried to reduce his role at the firm and hand the chief investment officer reins to Tom Wilcox, Shumway decided to shut down the firm altogether in early 2011.
In any case, the best performer among the four seeded funds last year was Greenwich, Connecticut-based JAT Capital Management, which posted a 30.6 percent gain. The $2.2 billion fund was founded in late 2007 by John Thaler, a technology,...