Hendry – ‘Bad things are going to happen’

Hugh Hendry is lying low. The Glaswegian founder of $800m hedge fund Eclectica stepped out of the limelight last year after a series of feisty television appearances made him Britain’s best-known hedge fund manager.

In a debate on Newsnight in 2010 Mr Hendry told Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate economist, “Um, hello? Can I tell you about the real world?” And, after a pugnacious appearance on the BBC’s Question Time, he briefly became the most-talked about person on Twitter.

For the genteel, wealthy investors in his funds, it was all a bit too much. So Mr Hendry stopped all media appearances and concentrated on making money. His $460m flagship fund gained 12.1 per cent over 2011 and is up about 3 per cent so far this year. It has returned a compound annual growth rate of almost 10 per cent since inception in 2002, performing best during bear markets.

“What I found was that when I speak in person, and especially when it’s television and timing is so acute, it gives the impression that I am cavalier and, if you will, full of myself,” says Mr Hendry, speaking by phone from his office in Bayswater, central London.

“The danger when people look at that from a distance is that they try to align that with the guy that they’ve just given $50m or $75m to and it’s not the same person.”

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Related previous post: Hugh Hendry: The Eclectica Fund: Manager Commentary, April 2012