Another Hedge Fund Bites the Dust as Mick McGuire’s Marcato Capital Plans to Close
Posted on 12/28/2019
Good press, strong mentors, and top pedigrees don’t always correlate into great returns. Formed in 2010, San Francisco-based Marcato Capital Management LP is an activist hedge fund run by Richard Trainor “Mick” McGuire III that targeted concentrated positions in small and mid-sized companies. The hedge fund had the financial backing of William “Bill” Ackman and The Blackstone Group. A Harvard MBA graduate, Mick McGuire was known as a protégé of Bill Ackman and a former Partner at Pershing Square Capital Management. McGuire worked at Pershing Square from 2005 to January 2009. Various news outlets have reported that Marcato Capital Management plans to shut down.
Marcato’s assets dropped to roughly US$ 250 million in the middle of 2019 from a high of US$ 3.2 billion in assets in 2015. The drop in assets started rapidly in 2016. Marcato Capital plans to return outside capital. One of the reasons for the redemptions is from poor investment returns. The fund had a sizable loss in 2018. Marcato held positions in companies such as Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, NCR Corporation, Sotheby’s, Lear Corporation, Packaging Corporation of America, Avis Budget Group, Inc., and Macquarie Infrastructure Company, LLC.
In 2013, Business Insider wrote a flattering piece on Mick McGuire titled, “Meet The ‘Handsome’ And ‘Successful’ 37-Year-Old Investor Running One Of The World’s Hottest Hedge Funds.” The once-magazine, now only a blog, called “Institutional Investor”, named Marcato the emerging fund manager of the year.
