Hedge fund veteran Ricky Sandler is shuttering Eminence Capital and returning investor cash after a 27-year run, telling clients it hasn't performed well enough in recent years to keep operating. In a letter to investors, Sandler said poor returns, the high cost of retaining talent and spending needed to build out necessary infrastructure made it untenable to continue on.
"Over the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult to apply our rigorous bottom-up investment process to rapidly shifting market conditions and an evolving market structure," Sandler wrote. "We believe that in recent years we have fallen short of our very high standard and your expectations."
The roughly $7 billion firm wagered on stocks and sometimes took an activist-investing approach during its multi-decade run.
A representative for the firm declined to comment.
The closing of Eminence comes at an inflection point for the hedge fund industry. Swelling assets at the biggest firms are prompting them to hire ever-more traders — and bid up for top talent. At the same time, rapid advancements in artificial intelligence are forcing firms to grapple with how best to integrate the technology.
And this year has gotten off to a particularly volatile start for traders. War in the Middle East and its macroeconomic consequences are whipsawing markets, leaving even leading firms struggling for gains and in some cases suffering big losses.
Eminence isn't the only fund to close recently. Alua Capital Management shuttered its $2 billion hedge fund last week after years of weak returns. AllianceBernstein closed hedge fund AB Arya this week after struggling with a lack of scale. And last year, Eisler Capital called it quits amid poor returns, shrinking assets and growing staffing costs.
Sandler's firm expects to return cash distributions of at least 75% of each Eminence fund's net asset value by mid-to-late June.
“I am tremendously proud of the Eminence team for the business and culture we built and the quality of our investor base,” Sandler wrote. “The Firm has been far more than a professional endeavor to me. It has been a defining part of my life.”
Sandler founded Eminence in 1999 after earlier launching a separate hedge fund, Fusion Capital Management, alongside Wayne Cooperman. Sandler began his investing career in 1991 at Mark Asset Management.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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