The story
Founded by Tom Steyer in 1986.1
History
Farallon was founded by Tom Steyer in January 1986 with $15 million in seed capital. Before starting Farallon, Steyer had worked for San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, as a risk arbitrage trader under Robert Rubin at Goldman Sachs, and in Morgan Stanley's corporate mergers and acquisitions department.
Farallon was one of the first hedge funds to raise money from a university endowment. In 1987, Steyer, who received his bachelor's degree from Yale, approached the university's endowment to allocate funds for Farallon to manage. The Yale endowment declined based on the fees charged by Farallon. David Swensen, Yale's chief investment officer, later arranged with Tom Steyer that Farallon would initially manage an allocation of the Yale endowment for no fee. After Yale's investment proved to be lucrative, many other college endowments and pensions began to invest in hedge funds.
Investment history
In 2007, Farallon in partnership with Simon Property Group and other hedge funds purchased Mills Corp, a real estate investment trust.
The fund is one of the largest shareholders in Japanese electronics company Toshiba, with a stake of more than 6 percent. Farallon is also one of the top-10 shareholders in Acceleron Pharma.
From Wikipedia’s article on Farallon Capital, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5