Thiel’s Clarium Hedge Fund Said to Decline 17% Through October

Date: Friday, November 5, 2010
Author: Saijel Kishan, Bloomberg

Clarium Capital Management LLC, the hedge-fund firm run by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, lost 17.1 percent this year for clients, according to an investor briefed on the returns.

The firm’s $347 million Clarium LP fund declined 1 percent last month, said the investor, asking not to be named because the information is private. Armel Leslie, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based firm, said he couldn’t comment.

Hedge funds climbed an average 1.1 percent last month and 3.1 percent this year, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc.’s HFRX Index.

Clarium, founded by Thiel, 43, in 2002 after selling online-payments service PayPal to EBay Inc. for $1.5 billion, trades everything from stocks to commodities, seeking to profit from broad economic trends, a strategy known as macro investing. Such funds gained 1 percent last month and have declined 2 percent this year, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research.

Thiel manages $742 million in assets, down from about $7 billion at its 2008 peak.

To contact the reporter on this story: Saijel Kishan in New York at skishan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at cbaumgaertel@bloomberg.net