The Sequoia Fund has announced the retirement of co-Manager Bob Goldfarb. The fund has been destroyed by the Valeant debacle. At its peak Valeant made up nearly 1/3 of the long-outperforming fund. Suffice it to say, Sequoia’s performance was adversely impacted by rolling the dice on a Canadian pharma roll-up with suspiciously low R&D and mountains of debt.
Careers of people associated with Valeant are piling up like the Layla scene in Goodfellas. It’s impossible to get out of this flaming hedge fund hotel fast enough. Don’t expect this to be the last victim.
Valeant went from a can’t-miss price rigging model (and possibly some shady accounting) to untouchable leper. Any pol not looking for a way to profit from this meltdown in some way has no ambition whatsoever. Valeant has no friends. It remains quite possibly the Shadiest Company on Earth:
At the center of it all, playing the role of Jimmy, is Mr. William Ackman. No one gets to Ackman, who insists he has a plan to fix all this.
Jimmy goes free. In the movies and real life.
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Great piece Jeff. I had written about ValueAct being horrendously over-exposed to VRX as well. It baffles my mind that a fund called VALUEAct and the alleged Buffet disciples at Sequoia could reasonably believe VRX was a value play.
I do not believe growth is mutually exclusive from value; without growth, an alleged “value” company is merely a crappy company. VRX had a minimal pipeline, and their current offerings, which include toe fungus and contact solution, doesn’t really scream giant growth prospects for the future.
particularly since Charlie Munger hadn’t liked Valeant for a long time and a long time before it blew up
which manager is the one who gets shot in the gut on the pool patio?
baptism murders scene from Godfather could have worked too.
I’m pretty sure Jimmy Conway died in jail. Full disclosure
Regards
Chuck bennett
(Refusing to even look into Jimmy Conway Bc I like my version… They’re going to drag Ackman like a pack of wolverines.)
Bob, don’t let the door hit you in the ass … Boo hoo. He still gets to keep the fortune he made investing other people’s money in this POS.
Throw Ackman on the pyre too. This was so clearly a POS to anyone who’s person ethics extended beyond a millimeter beyond what was legal.