Is Klarman’s Baupost Seeking Cash from Investors?

赛斯卡拉曼Baupost可能如此on be looking to raise some cash. The super-secretive hedge fund manager, known for his conservative, measured investing approach, is considering asking his existing investors to give back some of the cash he returned earlier in the year, according to a knowledgeable source.

The source says Klarman is definitely not soliciting outside money, as he did for a short while several years ago.

In early 2008, for the first time in eight years, he opened his funds to new money, drawing on his long waiting list. Klarman pulled in about $4 billion from foundations, educational institutions — especially Ivy League schools — and existing investors who had one shot at deciding whether they were in or not before the door was shut tight again.

At the end of 2010, he gave back 5 percent of his total assets to investors.

Now he is seriously mulling whether to ask for that money back. However, he is definitely not opening to new investors. If he seeks cash, it would be from those earlier recipients, says a knowledgeable source.

The hedge fund manager told clients in a letter this summer that he is generally bearish on the global economy and concerned about the debt woes in Europe.

Still, the fact he is seeking cash from any source is somewhat encouraging. According to the knowledgeable person, Klarman generally feels there are certain times you want cash available and this may be one of those times.

Baupost，在年底是世界上第11个最大的对冲基金，在管理下的234亿美元，略微在艰难的第三季度下降，大约是平坦的一年到日期。它几乎在过去十年中几乎每年都表现优于标准普尔500指数，其最古老的伙伴关系自1983年成立以来的年度回报率约为19％。

Klarman.is known as a global value sleuth, deftly exploiting virtually any undervalued market, including domestic and foreign stocks and bonds; emerging market securities; distressed securities and trade claims; performing and nonperforming bank loans; real estate-related debt and equity; privately negotiated investments; and other illiquid investments.

He earned a BA in economics from Cornell University in 1979, graduating magna cum laude. He was first exposed to value investing principles working during the summer of his junior year at New York’s Mutual Shares, the legendary value-driven mutual fund firm founded in 1949 by Max Heine, and also headed by Michael Price, who in his 20s had become a Heine protégé.

Upon graduation, Klarman returned to Mutual Shares, and after 18 months he left the firm for Harvard Business School, where he earned his MBA and was named a Baker Scholar. He fatefully took a real estate course with professor Bill Poorvu, who asked Klarman to help him and his friends invest their considerable sums of money. Baupost was born.

In his second quarter letter sent to clients in July, Klarman was very worried about the European debt crisis and was concerned that American banks had too much exposure to European debt. As a result, he even feared money market funds might “break the buck,” as happened in 2008.

他据说他告诉客户那么少了解，几乎没有变化，下一个危机可能会更糟。

鉴于巨额预算赤字和其他消极发展，他也对经济前景令人悲观。

Even so, the bottom-up investor stressed it is still possible to find specific investments to be undervalued. At the time he said he added selectively to residential mortgage backed securities and individual securities.

According to regulatory filings, in the second quarter he increased his exposure to U.S. equity-type instruments by more than one-third, to $2.4 billion, compared with the prior quarter. It was spread over just 20 different names. His biggest positions were in Viasat, which produces satellite and other digital communication products and of which Baupost is the largest shareholder; Microsoft, a new position in the second quarter; Newscorp; and Theravance, a biopharmaceutical company.