Ex-Sequoia investor Jeff Wang's new hedge fund had Morgan Stanley's Breakers conference abuzz
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- Jeff Wang is planning to launch Augnition Global Investors later this year.
- At Morgan Stanley's annual Breakers conference in Palm Beach, the new fund was the talk of the event.
- The new hedge fund could raise $1 billion, several people who attended the conference said.
Attendees of Morgan Stanley's annual investor conference at the posh Breakers resort in Palm Beach often leave with a good idea of who the next hot thing in the hedge-fund world is going to be.
Last year, the buzz revolved around former Viking Global chief investment officer Ning Jin's new fund, Avantyr Capital. The chatter at this year's confab, held last week and closed to the media, was all about former Sequoia Capital investor Jeff Wang and his new fund, according to two people who attended meetings with the yet-to-launch firm.
His new firm, Augnition Global Investors, is set to be a long-short equity investor that will also invest in private companies, a person close to the firm said. Alan Lo, a longtime partner and director of operations for New York-based SRS Investment Management, will be Wang's number two at the new fund.
Those at the Breakers conference expect him to raise at least $1 billion, the two conference attendees told Business Insider. It's expected that Wang will raise at least $1 billion, the two conference attendees told Business Insider. Last year's strong performance from long-short equity managers, along with headlining-grabbing launches from stockpickers Jin and former Coatue executive Daniel Senft, will only help Wang's profile, the two attendees added.
A person close to the firm said Wang is prioritizing investors who want to be longtime partners with Augnition as the firm prepares to start trading later this year, and emphasized that Wang and Lo are putting a considerable amount of their own net worth into the fund. Wang declined to comment.
For more than a decade, Wang led Sequoia's global equities business, which invests in public stocks and late-stage private companies. In a LinkedIn post last year, he said that the fund's annual average return was more than 17%. Assets, his post said, grew from $600 million to more than $9 billion.
Wang is also a member of the extended Tiger Cub network, a massive web of hedge funds tied to the late Julian Robertson's Tiger Management. He worked briefly for Bill Hwang's Tiger Asia before the financial crisis, then spent a couple of years at TPG before joining Sequoia.