C. Frederick ‘Fred’ Taylor
CO-FOUNDER, PARTNER
TGS MANAGEMENT LLC
THE MONEY: Taylor is the “T” in TGS, an extremely secretive quant hedge fund with offices in Irvine.
THE NUMBERS: Estimates of Taylor’s wealth vary widely. Along with founding members David Gelbaum and Andrew Shechtel, the trio first gained national attention about nine years ago, when a Bloomberg report said the hedge fund managers had “secretly directed one of the largest pools of philanthropic capital for years,” one it estimated at more than $13B.
RARE SIGHTINGS: There’s been next to no mention of the firm or its founders since the Bloomberg report, with the exception of the Business Journal’s reports on Taylor’s real estate investments in Irvine. Sources familiar with the founders tell the journal that prior estimates of Taylor’s wealth are likely well on the low side, giving the Business Journal confidence to boost his estimate by $1B dollars this year.
THE MENTOR: The partners are disciples of South Orange County resident and “Man for All Markets” by Edward O. Thorp, founder of one of the world’s first quantitative hedge funds, Princeton-Newport Partners, in 1969. Thorp told Businessweek that the men opened a hedge fund in 1989 and practiced a form of statistical arbitrage, seeking to profit from the tendency of recently fallen stocks to rise, and the recently risen to fall.
PHILANTHROPY: According to Inside Philanthropy, perhaps as much as $850M of Taylor’s giving gets funneled through the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program. He’s been reported to be a major supporter of the Landmine Survivors Network and other human rights causes. Taylor is a major benefactor and board member of Tarbut V’torah Community Day School in Irvine, a Jewish day school founded by late businessman and Holocaust survivor Irving “Papa” Gelman, on land donated by the Samueli Foundation.
Taylor’s Sequoia Climate Foundation will donate $267M this year, according to a report in Inside Philanthropy.
