First it was Ken Griffin, then Bill Ackman, now it's David Einhorn's turn.
Perhaps eager for a complete "change of scenery" after years of moribund returns, some of America's most prominent hedge fund managers are taking the metaphorical knife to their personal lives, and wives.
According to the Post, David Einhorn is separating from his wife of 24 years, Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, and the pair is heading for divorce. The billionaire Greenlight Capital founder, whose stock picks have moved markets, if perhaps a little less in recent months, has separated from Cheryl, whom he married in 1993 before he made his fortune, now estimated at $1.55 billion.
Among the possessions at stake in the upcoming divorce is the 10,000-square-foot home in Rye, NY, and supposedly Einhorn's rumored vault of gold stashed at a secret location in New York City. He has said the gold is used by his fund as a hedge against inflation.
Cheryl, with whom David has three children, is an award-winning financial reporter and media consultant who has also taught at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Columbia Business School. According to the Post, she is also credited with coming up with the name “Greenlight” when he launched his fund in 1996. The couple is well-known in New York for their philanthropic work. In 2002, they established the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, “with the vision of building a more peaceful and harmonious society,” according to its website, which features numerous photos of Cheryl and David.
He also serves on the boards of City Year, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, and as chair of the Robin Hood Foundation’s board of directors.
It is not clear what precipitated the split.
In other Greenlight-related news, Bloomberg reports that along with his newly found personal freedom, Eimhorn is also redoing his portfolio, and has joined numerous other hedge fund managers, among which Kyle Bass and Jeff Gundlach in betting on declines in government debt, as well as a rebound in gold to protect against the risk of inflation under Trump.
“We made several changes to the macro portfolio in response to the election,” Einhorn said Thursday in a conference call discussing results for Greenlight Capital Re Ltd., the Cayman Islands-based reinsurer where he is chairman. “It was various long positions in sovereign fixed income that we eliminated. We added some additional shorts in sovereign fixed income, and we added to our long equity exposure.” Einhorn did not specify which nations’ debt he was betting against.
Einhorn said the reinsurer’s investment portfolio slipped by about half a percent in January. As Bloomberg notes, the company is seeking to improve insurance underwriting results and is looking for a new chief executive officer after saying in December that Bart Hedges will step down this year
Einhorn is seeking to extend a rally in the investment portfolio of Greenlight Re, which said late Wednesday that it posted back-to-back quarterly profit for the first time since 2013. The portfolio was helped in the last three months of 2016 by bets on General Motors Co. and Japanese bank Resona Holdings Inc., while gold was a weak spot.
Einhorn is confident that gold will shine nonetheless: “our long-term outlook remains bullish,” for the metal, Einhorn said. “The new administration comes with a high degree of uncertainty, and its policy initiatives appear to be focused on stimulating growth and, with it, inflation.”