Peter Andreas Thiel of Clarium Capital Management, LLC
Media Releases
In August of 2006, a lawsuit was filed by Amisil Holdings against Clarium Capital Management LLC, Peter Thiel, Jason Portnoy, and Mark Woolway. Amisil alleged that Peter Thiel and Clarium had been “playing an elaborate shell game with our (Amisil’s) investment for the last eight years.” Amisil had been an investor in Clarium Capital since 1998 and alleges that they were not fairly compensated when Thiel’s company Paypal went public 2002 and then sold out to EBay for $1.5 billion. Amisil states that in 1998, they invested $300,000 into Clarium that bought them a 1% ownership in the company. Clarium responded to the allegations saying that the claims were merit less and based on numerous misstatements of fact. Clarium also stated that they had planned to file countercharges against Amisil.
In April 2009 Mr. Thiel hinted that Facebook and Twitter had been unable to reach an agreement on a price for the deal (rumored to be $500 million in stock), or the future structure of the company.
In October 2008 it was reported that Clarium Capital dropped 18% that month, reporting a YTD return of 2.8%, erasing a 58% gain from the first half of the year.
Peter Thiel is No. 10 in Out’s list of powerful gays. An August 2008 article reported he was dating Matt Danzeisen, a vice president at BlackRock.
An April 2008 article announces that Clarium Capital Management LLC fell 9.9% in March on foreign stock investments, but is still up 15% for the year. Clarium, a global macro fund that invests in commodities, currencies, fixed income and equities, posted an 8.5% decline in foreign equities, which worsened the month’s returns.
On April 15th, 2008, Thiel pledged $500,000 to the new Seasteading Institute, whose mission is “to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems”.
A February 2008 article reveals that Clarium surged 24.4% in January as bets against leveraged U.S. companies and the dollar paid off. Clarium’s positions in U.S. equities contributed most to the gains, while bets that overseas currencies would appreciate against the U.S. dollar also boosted returns. Clarium tries to make money from distortions in global markets created by the collapse of the 1990s technology bubble. The firm’s main $4 billion hedge fund returned 40.3% in 2007, enjoying a particularly strong surge in the fourth quarter. It’s gained more than 400% since it was set up.
Peter Thiel is an avowed Libertarian. In December 2007, he endorsed Ron Paul for President.
In addition to Facebook, Thiel has made early-stage investments in several startups, including Slide, LinkedIn, Friendster, Geni.com, Yammer, Yelp, Powerset, Vator, Palantir Technologies, Joyent and IronPort. Slide, LinkedIn, Yelp, Geni.com, Yammer, and IronPort were each founded by colleagues of Thiel’s from PayPal. Fortune magazine reports that PayPal alumni have founded or invested in dozens of startups with an aggregate value, according to Thiel, of around $30 billion. In Silicon Valley circles, Thiel is colloquially referred to as the “Don of the PayPal Mafia”, as noted in the Fortune magazine article.
Mr. Thiel is an occasional commentator on CNBC, having appeared numerous times on both Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo, and Squawk Box with Becky Quick. He’s twice been interviewed by Charlie Rose on PBS. In 2006, he won the Herman Lay Award for Entrepreneurship. He was also reported to be an attendee of the elite and highly secretive Bilderberg Group conference in both 2007 and 2008. In 2007, he was honored as a Young Global leader by the World Economic Forum as one of the 250 most distinguished leaders age 40 and under.
Peter Thiel and Ken Howery established The Founders Fund, a tiny but influential venture capital firm that focuses on consumer Internet startups. He believes that founders should get more of a stake and a say in their own companies. He launched this fund in 2005. In December 2007 it was reported that Founders Fund II would invest in approximately 15 to 20 innovative early-stage start-up companies. The first Founders Fund raised $50 million from the firm’s managing partners and other investors.
Mr. Thiel was an executive producer of the film Thank You for Smoking.
Peter Thiel provided a $500,000 “angel investment” to Facebook. Some articles report issues over Facebook’s privacy policy, which leaves open the possibility that the company will share information with third parties. The article lists Peter Thiel as a “right-wing darling” and a board member of the conservative Vanguard PAC.
Peter Thiel was an early investor in YouTube, an online website that was sold to Google for $1.65 billion. YouTube was founded by former PayPal employees.
A May 2007 article read, “Clarium Capital, the $2bn San Francisco hedge fund run by Peter Thiel, the Paypal co-founder, is betting that central banks will raise interest rates far more than most people expect after concluding that the global wave of liquidity is being generated by petrodollars.” Peter Thiel commented heavily for the article, and seems to be referring to Mr. Harrington’s “Petrodollar Illusion” theory.
In 2006, an article stated that Peter Thiel’s alter ego at Clarium Capital Management is Kevin Harrington. Harrington is described as a physicist who used to do mathematical research for the Department of Defense.
In September of 2006, while working at Clarium, Harrington worked 36 hours straight to complete a 21-page report entitled “The Petrodollar Illusion.” The theory is that the United States economy has been propped up by the money produced by the increased price of oil. This has created an artificial boost in US stocks and spurred mortgage lending. He believes that at some point this will stop and the stock market and housing market will collapse.
In September of 2006, Peter Thiel pledged $3.5 million to support anti-aging research through the Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation.
In February 2006 Thiel provided $100,000 of matching funds to back the Singularity Challenge donation drive of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Additionally he joined the Institute’s advisory board and participated in the May 2006 Singularity Summit at Stanford.
In September of 2005, Peter Thiel was interviewed for his opinions on the state of the markets. He spoke about Google stock, the prices of oil, inflation, and housing bubbles.
In 2005, Clarium was honored as global macro fund of the year by both MarHedge and Absolute Return, two trade magazines.
Joyent was founded in 2004 with a seed investment from co-founder and CEO David Young and Peter Thiel. Joyent’s customers include LinkedIn, Major League Baseball, Gilt.com, Facebook, and 20,000 other companies ranging from small development shops to large Fortune 500 enterprise users. Joyent powers 25% of the daily application traffic on Facebook.
In March 2004, American Content Inc., a new venture established by Clarium Capital Management LLC, launched American Thunder magazine, dedicated to NASCAR.
In April 2003 Remanage, Inc., a Dallas-based software company, secured $3 million in funding from Clarium Capital and Novus Ventures.
In March 2003, Thiel led funding at Epoch Innovations that raised $6 million.
In June 2002, PayPal disclosed that the Banking Development Department of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority sent it a letter, advising that the regulator was trying to determine whether PayPal was accepting deposits for Hong Kong users. If that is the case, PayPal would be required under Hong Kong law to provide specific information about this aspect of its operations on its Web site or risk fines or imprisonment.
In February 2002 CertCo, Inc., an online security company in New York, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against PayPal. It was settled for what the terms called a “non-consequential” payment.
In 2002 MasterCard fined PayPal $313,600 for excessive credit card “charge backs”.
In 2002 it was reported that two class action suits over customer service had been filed against PayPal. One of the lawsuits alleged that the company illegally froze customers’ accounts for purposes of fraud detection and deducted funds from customers’ accounts without conducting an investigation. The other said it violated the Electronic Funds Transfer Act by unjustly retaining funds belonging to customers, inadequately investigating customer complaints, and failing to provide a readily available phone number customers could use to report problems.
In 2002, just hours before PayPal was set to go public, the state of Louisiana ordered it to terminate all business in that state, asserting that the company had failed to obtain a “money transfer license,” which many states require from anyone in the businesses of cashing checks, transmitting money, or exchanging currency. New York threatened a similar order.
Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin in December 1998 and launched it in October 1999. He is also a former CEO. In 2001 the company went public and by 2002 they were showing a profit. In 2002, he sold the company to eBay for $1.5 billion. Mr. Thiel netted about $55 million in the deal.
Prior to opening Paypal, Mr. Thiel ran a hedge fund called Thiel Capital Management. This later became Clarium Capital after the PayPal sale.
Mr. Thiel is a research fellow at The Independent Institute.
He is quoted in a number of articles relating to Google’s IPO. In articles from late August 2004, he says that, “in the long run, ’ nobody will remember all the problems; what they will remember is that the process worked.’”
He is also quoted about oil futures, something Clarium has been investing in, despite many others bailing out.
Mr. Thiel is on the Board of Directors at Xoom and VanGuardPAC.
Thiel and Clarium were contributors towards the gubernatorial campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
After leaving Stanford in 1992, Mr. Thiel clerked for Judge J.L. Edmondson of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, eventually joining the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP, in New York City. He later worked at CS Financial Products, now part of the Credit Suisse Group, before founding Thiel Capital Management in 1996.
While at Stanford University, Mr. Thiel founded The Stanford Review, a conservative college newspaper. He has been a contributing author to the Hoover Institutions conservative journal, Policy Review, and the co-author of The Diversity Myth: ‘Multiculturalism’ and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford.
While a student at San Mateo High School, Mr. Thiel developed into both a math genius and a chess prodigy, eventually finishing first in his class. He achieved and has maintained his U.S. Chess Master rating up to the present.
The following articles provide in-depth detail into Mr. Thiel background: http://www.atrader.com/articles5.html and www.fullermoney.com/content/2006-12-04/BloombergOnHedgeFundManager4Dec06.pdf
