Hedge-fund mogul Larry Robbins, founder of $4.5 billion Glenview Capital, posted healthy returns last year after a sickly 2011 by betting big on hospital stocks.
Glenview’s $3.6 billion flagship fund is on track to post a 2012 gain of nearly 30 percent, The Post has learned, after racking up a gain of 5.72 percent in the first 21 days of December.
With the December surge, the fund was on track to close the year with a gain of 29.31 percent before fees, according to a weekly update Glenview sent to investors, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.
The fund made big bets on health-care stocks in 2012.
The firm’s smaller opportunities fund, known as “Go,” is up about 60 percent before fees, sources told The Post.
The turnaround is a sweet tonic for investors, which saw returns tumble 12 percent in 2011, sources said.
The boom comes at a perfect time for Robbins, a former trader at Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors. Robbins put his investment thesis on public display last May at the prestigious Ira Sohn investing conference.
At the conference, Robbins told the audience that he is betting on hospital stocks because, like it or not, President Obama’s health-care reform will be a boon to for-profit hospitals like Tenet Healthcare.
Even if Obamacare had been struck down, hospital stocks had fallen so much in price they were still an attractive buy, he said.
This year, Tenet Healthcare, which owns 49 hospitals across the US and is Glenview’s second largest holding, is up 58 percent. HCA Holdings, Glenview’s fifth-largest holding, is ahead 37 percent this year.
Since its inception in 2001, Gleview’s flagship fund has had an average annual return of 13.2 percent, a source familiar with the returns told The Post.
Over that same period, the S&P 500 has had a 1 percent annual return.
Robbins, 42, seen as one of the more flamboyant hedgies, flew 100 of his Wall Street pals to his wedding in June to Sarahmay Wesemael in the French Riviera, The Post’s Page Six reported.
He also built an indoor ice rink on his 3-acre home in leafy Cresskill, NJ, sparking a feud with neighbors who reportedly dubbed it “Madison Square Garden up on the hill.”
Robbins is also active on the New York charitable circuit, including KIPP New York, The Robin Hood Foundation and Teach For America. Friends say he is as passionate about his charitable works as he is about investing and hockey.
The hockey fanatic named his firm after a town in Illinois where he learned to play hockey as a 5-year-old, sources said.
Reached by phone, Randy Simpson, Glenview’s head of health-care research, said the firm still sees its healthcare plays as a winner.