Proving New York City is still a tough town, Facebook angel investor and Silicon Valley golden boy Peter Thiel is hightailing it out of the Big Apple just two years after setting up shop here, The Post has learned.
The reason? Sagging performance and dwindling assets at his Clarium Capital Management, where he’d placed large deflationary bets backing the US dollar, which fell in value versus other currencies, sources said.
Thiel is consolidating his operations back in San Francisco, sources said.
Ironically, Clarium’s poor performance began as he decided to open up a second office — overlooking Bryant Park in Midtown. Thiel is giving up his dreams of a New York-based financial empire and advertising for a tenant to take over the 29th floor of the Grace Building in Bryant Park.
The 42-year old billionaire placed the 30,450 square foot space on the market in May, and is seeking someone to lease it through May 2013, according to marketing material obtained by The Post.
Clarium spokesman James O’Neill confirmed the move, saying “access to Silicon Valley thinkers has been important to Clarium’s thinking since inception, and we expect it to be even more important in the year ahead.” He also said that the return to California won’t impact Clarium’s senior investment team.
Thiel, who made his fortune selling PayPal to eBay in 2002, started moving Clarium staffers — starting with about 30 people, roughly half the staff — to the towering Midtown office space in September 2008 amid booming returns and soaring assets.
Now, just two years later, Clarium Capital Management is entering its third year of negative performance, and the firm expects all of its roughly 55 staffers to be back on the West Coast by the end of the summer.
So far this year, Clarium is down 6 percent, following losses of 25 percent last year. Assets have also dwindled to under $1 billion from a peak of $7.2 billion amassed just as Thiel was uprooting his staff to move to the big city.
Of course, the return to California could prove auspicious.
Last month, as Thiel was placing the New York office on the market, his fund was starting to benefit from his pessimistic views for the US economy. In May, when most hedge funds were clobbered, Clarium gained 4 percent.