Tiger Global Faces ‘Breathtaking’ $17B Loss, Expert Says

This year’s tech stock sell-off has cost Tiger Global around $17 billion, one of the largest declines ever for a hedge fund, the Financial Times (FT) reported Tuesday (May 10).

This performance means Tiger Global — among the world’s largest hedge funds — has seen around two-thirds of the gains it had built up for the last two decades wiped out in four months, according to the report.

“The magnitude of the loss is breathtaking, especially for a fund with ‘hedge’ in its name,” Andrew Beer, managing member at investment firm Dynamic Beta told FT. “This shows how even the most talented and plugged-in tech investors failed to see the train coming down the tracks.”

The losses were estimated by LCH, a fund of hedge funds overseen by the Edmond de Rothschild Group, an authority on hedge funds which compiles a list each year of the world’s top money managers, the report stated.

Tiger Global declined to comment to FT, which reported that a source close to the fund argued that investors into Tiger have made more than 20 times their initial contribution.

However, the fund’s losses overshadow some of the larger recent drops in the hedge fund world, such as the $12.1 billion lost by Bridgewater when the pandemic began in 2020, and Melvin Capital’s loss of $7 billion last year amid the GameStop trading buzz, according to the report.

Also Tuesday, SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund is being negatively impacted by the tech stock sell-off.

Read more: SoftBank’s Vision Fund Suffers Amid Tech Stock Slide

The Japanese firm is scheduled to release earnings results later this week. The stocks that comprise the fund, launched five years ago, have fallen by more than half since the year began. If SoftBank held onto the shares of those companies, it could be looking at a loss of higher than $25 billion. The fund was last valued at $138.5 billion in late 2021, with a return of about 40% the past four years.