Jeff Vinik's Equity Fund Falls Short of His $3 Billion Target

(Bloomberg) -- Jeff Vinik, who rose to fame as manager of the Fidelity Magellan fund, is finding that raising money for a hedge fund isn’t as easy as it used to be.

When Vinik told potential investors that he was resurrecting the hedge fund he closed in 2013, he said he expected to raise $3 billion by March 1. On Thursday, he informed them he won’t reach that target by then.

"My expectation for the timing of inflows has been too optimistic," Vinik wrote in a letter to potential investors in his Vinik Asset Management. "I clearly underestimated the realities of the time needed for diligence by institutional investors in 2019."

The fund will still launch on March 1, according to the letter, which didn’t cite how much it will start with. A spokesman for the firm declined to comment.

Vinik’s struggle illustrates how the appetite for hedge funds has changed since he first got into the business in 1996 after leaving Fidelity. He raised $800 million, then one of the biggest startups.

Vinik uses "old fashioned bottom-up stock picking" in his fund, while other equity funds are increasingly embracing big data and machine learning to help them trade.

He will take in money on the first of each month until July 1 and quarterly thereafter until the target is reached, the letter said.

“My passion and enthusiasm for getting back in the game remain as strong as ever,” he wrote.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hema Parmar in New York at hparmar6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Katherine Burton

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