Julian Robertson, the billionaire investor and an early pioneer of the hedge fund industry, is  again proving to be a top picker of new talent.
His $450 million Tiger Accelerator Fund, which invests in six hedge funds that Mr. Robertson personally has invested in, is up 22.6 percent net of fees as of Dec. 15, according to a person briefed on the matter. By comparison, the broadest hedge fund industry index is up just about 9 percent for the year.
Mr. Robertson began the Tiger Accelerator Fund in 2011, marking a return to the hedge fund industry after shuttering his Tiger Management fund in 2000. Tiger Management, with $22 billion at its peak, once was one of the industry’s largest funds and delivered annual returns of nearly 30 percent before slumping in 1999 and 2000.
Mr. Robertson helped start the careers of a number of notable hedge fund managers including Chase Coleman of Tiger Global, Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital and Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global Investors.
Overall, Mr. Roberston has provided seed capital or early investment money to about 40 hedge funds. In the hedge fund world, funds that either have received investment money from Mr. Robertson or were founded by traders who once worked for him are sometimes referred to as Tiger cubs.
The six hedge funds that the Tiger Accelerator Fund’s performance tracks are Tiger Veda, Cascabel, Long Oar Global, Tiger Eye, Tiger Ratan and Tiger Veda Global. The Accelerator fund’s $450 million investment is on top of the roughly $230 million Mr. Robertson committed of his own money to those funds.
Unlike other seeder funds that tend to commit money to new funds with a relatively short track record, the Accelerator fund selected six funds that had several years of operation behind them. Mr. Robertson tapped the services of Morgan Stanley to market his seeder fund to investors, which raised most of its money during the first-half of 2011.
