Highfields Capital Management LP is a hedge fund founded in 1998 which had assets of $12.1 billion in 2018.^[4][5] The annualized net returns during the firm's first 20 years were more than 10%.^[6]

Richard Grubman and Jonathon Jacobson met at an investment lunch in New York City in the early ‘90s and started a friendship. In 1998, they opened Highfields Capital Management LP together in Boston, Massachusetts.^[7]

Highfields has invested in publicly traded equities and private companies like Harry & David, Michaels, Genworth Financial, Microsoft^[8] and SLM Corporation;^[9] and other investments including reinsurance sidecars. Grubman and Jacobson gained attention and a large payoff when they bet against Enron before the 2001 bankruptcy.^[10] In February 2012, Highfields called for management change at CoreLogic,^[11] in which it had a 7.65% stake.^[12]

In 2010, Highfields was listed as having $10 billion of assets on January 1, 2010, 30th in The Hedge Fund Journal Top 50, up from $9.3 billion on July 1, 2009 and up from a 38th-place ranking in 2008.^[3]

In 2013, Highfields returned $2 billion to clients. As Jacobson wrote to investors, "we would rather be slightly smaller and generate better [returns]."^[13]

In October of 2018, Highfields announced in a letter that they would return all outside capital^[14] and would convert into a family office.^[15] In a third quarter letter to investors, Jacobson wrote, “Done correctly, money management is an all-consuming, 24/7 pursuit… After three-and-a-half decades of sitting in front of a screen, I realized I am ready for a change."^[16]

Over the 20 years between 1998 and 2018, Highfields only lost money in two years: 2002 and 2008.^[10]

Richard Grubman and Jonathon Jacobson co-founded Highfields Capital Management LP in 1998.^[3]

Grubman retired in August 2010; Jacobson remains a principal of the firm.^[17]

Jacobson is an undergraduate alumnus of Wharton School in finance and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.^[12] After working as an options trader and at Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, he joined Harvard Management Company in 1990.^[18] In 1998 Jacobson left HMC to co-found Highfields with a third of the fund's initial $1.5 billion under management coming from HMC.^[12] Bloomberg reported in 2011 that HMC no longer invested with Highfields.^[19]