Hedge fund manager Jeff Vinik is re-launching his firm Vinik Asset Management, six years after returning money to investors for a second time in 2013.
The hedge fund firm, which Vinik has operated on and off since 1996, will reopen with members of its former leadership team, according to an announcement from Vinik early Thursday. Vinik will serve as the sole investment decision maker, while Mark Hostetter and Gerry Coughlin will rejoin the firm as co-presidents.
“After six years of running my own money, the fire in my belly still burns,” Vinik said in a statement. “I am confident that the style I have employed for more than three decades – fundamental bottom-up company analysis (growth at a reasonable price) guided by a top-down blueprint of the economy and markets – can achieve strong long-term returns.”
The firm will initially employ three investment analysts and outsource infrastructure support to Oakpoint Advisors, an institutional hedge fund services platform headed by Coughlin.
The Wall Street Journal reported Vinik is targeting a fundraise of $3 billion and plans to launch the fund on March 1.
Vinik rose to fame in the mid-1990s at Fidelity, when he served as the portfolio manager of the firm’s Magellan Fund. Early success was followed by subpar returns, and Vinik left in in 1996 to launch his name-sake hedge fund firm.
The first iteration of Vinik Asset Management earned 93.8 percent in its first 11 months, according to a biography of Vinik posted on the website of Dreamit, an early-stage venture fund and startup accelerator where he serves as a partner and member of the board of directors.
Vinik returned $4.2 billion to investors in 2000, but would re-open the fund to outside money a few years later. Vinik Asset Management was then completely shut down in 2013, after suffering losses following a restructuring.
In Thursday’s statement, Vinik attributed the firm’s 2013 closing to his desire to focus on his ownership of the Tampa Bay Lightning, a National Hockey League team he purchased in 2010 for $170 million, as well as the development of Strategic Property Partners, a real estate development firm launched by Vinik in partnership with Bill Gates’s family office Cascade Investment.
“Now that I have put in place great leadership teams at my Tampa Bay businesses and my Tampa Bay-focused policy initiatives, I have ample amounts of time to serve my clients to the best of my abilities,” Vinik said in the statement. “I can’t wait to get started.”
