Hedge-fund mogul Dan Loeb, best known for his vitriolic comments to both corporate chieftains and fellow hedge fund managers, sparked a bit of eye-rolling on Wall Street when he said at a conference on Thursday that spirituality was not only good for monks but could be useful in business.
“Meditation, contemplation — it’s not just for monks and hermits,” Loeb told attendees at an American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Fellow hedge fund titans and subjects of his shareholder activist letters may disagree.
Last March, Loeb, who owns the Third Point hedge fund, lectured hedgie Bill Ackman at the Vanity Fair Academy Awards party on how free enterprise is basically amoral, someone who heard the conversation told The Post.
“I made $50 million for my investors,” Loeb said, noting that making money was all that mattered, according to Ackman.
Then last spring, when Ackman’s Herbalife bet began losing money Loeb was decidedly more scatological than spiritual when he posted a message on Bloomberg: “New HLF Product: The
Herbalife Enema administered by Uncle Carl,” a reference to Herbalife investor Carl Icahn.
To be sure, Loeb has made a ton of money for his investors in recent years. But his reputation took a turn for the worse last year after a scathing profile in Vanity Fair said that, even by Wall Street standards, Loeb’s “tactics — nasty, personal attacks on C.E.O.’s and colleagues — are considered extreme.”
After the profile, some investors began to exit from Loeb’s fund — most recently Rhode Island’s state employees. Loeb could not be reached for comment.