Billionaire hedge fund founder was fired from his first hedge fund job
If you were let go from the hedge fund job of your dreams recently, then have no fear: it might be in your cards to set up a $12bn hedge fund.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
At least, that’s what happened to Third Point founder Daniel Loeb. Loeb admitted as such on X (formerly known as Twitter) yesterday. “I learned from my mistakes and came back as a credit analyst then applied what I learned in debt to equity investing,” Loeb said. “It all worked out ok.”
Loeb's current net worth is $3.2bn, according to Forbes, which is indeed pretty “ok” for someone who got the boot when they first dabbled in the industry. Responding to someone on X, Loeb said that the lessons he learned from his firing were “to work harder at being a better analyst, not just the tasks. Also to work harder. Period.”
After being fired from that role – as an equity analyst at Lafer Equity Investors – Loeb was hired to work as a sell-side credit analyst for investment bank Jefferies. His boss, the person who hired him, was none other than Richard Handler who ended up being CEO of Jefferies around a decade later. 35 years later, they exchange ribs on X, reminiscing about the recession.
Loeb only lasted three years or so at Jefferies. He spent an additional year or so at Citigroup, then known as Citicorp, before leaving to launch Third Point, with over $3m in capital from family and friends. It's primarily an activist investor, known for its jockeying of companies such as Yahoo. The fund describes itself as employing an "opportunistic, event-driven approach to finding investments."
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
