Hedge Fund - Baupost Group

Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group is the world’s 11th largest hedge fund. Seth Klarman is also the writer of a $1500 book, Margin of Safety, which reflects his views on investing. Klarman was fresh off of graduating from Harvard Business School when one of his professors, Bill Poorvu, asked him to help manage money. Poorvu and his partners, Howard Stevenson, Jordan Baruch and Isaac Auerbach, used their names to create the acronym, Baupost, that became the name of the company. Klarman’s name wasn’t included. Clearly when they hired Seth Klarman, they didn’t want to change the name of the fund to Baupostkl.

Baupost had an initial capital of $27 Million, which was a very large amount of money in 1982. The four founders were planning to split this capital among several money managers, but they literally couldn’t find other conservative money managers. So, Seth Klarman was given all that money to manage. And when we say conservative, we really mean it. Seth A. Klarman published his book in 1991.