Jeffrey Tarrant

Jeffrey Glynn Tarrant (April 4, 1956 – August 5, 2019) was an American investor. He was the founder and chairman of MOV37 and Protégé Partners, firms specializing in identifying, seeding and early stage investing in investment funds. He was also a founding partner of film production company Candescent Films. He died from brain cancer in 2019.

Education Tarrant received a BA in economics from the University of California, Davis in 1978, and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1985.

Career Early career After graduating from Harvard Business School, Tarrant joined Berkeley Asset Management in Berkeley, California, as vice president, co-managing the Sequoia Fund, one of the first fund of hedge funds in the United States. He went on to manage assets for private family fortunes, including Sidney Kimmel (film producer and founder of the Jones Apparel Group). For the Thurn und Taxis family of Germany, he managed their marketable securities hedge fund portfolio and investments in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe. InvestorForce purchased it in 2000, and it was made a division of investment research firm Morningstar in 2006.

Protégé Partners Tarrant served from 1998 to 2002 on the board of directors of The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF), an investment advisory firm for charitable foundations, and advised TIFF on building its first hedge fund of funds. Tarrant initially served as chief investment officer and chief executive officer, with Seides as president. Seides took over as co-CIO in 2011 until leaving the firm in 2015, at which point Tarrant resumed his role as sole CIO. In 2017, he moved into the role of chairman.

Tarrant is featured in Gregory Zuckerman's 2009 nonfiction book The Greatest Trade Ever, about John Paulson's use of credit default swaps to bet against the US subprime mortgage bubble. Tarrant and Paulson were discussing issues with the housing market as far back as 2004. Tarrant was the lead investor in Paulson's new fund, putting in $60 million on behalf of Protégé clients in 2006 (out of a total of $147 million Paulson would raise).

Buffett bet In early 2008, Warren Buffett bet Protégé Partners that over a 10-year period, the S&P 500 Index would outperform a portfolio of hedge funds. In 2012, after the bonds appreciated faster than expected and interest rates fell, the two sides agreed to buy 11,200 Berkshire Hathaway B shares, which at the end of 2017 were worth $2.22 million. Buffett won the bet, and that amount was donated to Girls Inc. of Omaha.

Digital currency Tarrant was one of the backers of the MIT Media Lab's Bitcoin Developer Fund. It provides financial support for the three bitcoin developers working for the Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative, which was launched in 2015 to explore issues involved in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. In 2016, Tarrant invested in Polychain Capital, then the world's largest cryptocurrency hedge fund, cashing out at the end of 2017. He was an investor in early iterations of quantitative hedge fund investing, including Renaissance Technologies.

MOV37 Around 2016, Tarrant began focusing on machine learning and data science, exploring hedge funds built on concepts of artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing, and digital currencies.

Documentary films Tarrant was a founding partner in the production company Candescent Films, which was started in 2010 to produce and finance documentary films exploring social issues. With Candescent, Tarrant was an executive producer on films including Sons of the Clouds, narrated by Javier Bardem, which premiered at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival and won the 2013 Goya Award for Best Documentary Film; The Queen of Versailles, which won the 2012 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Directing Award for Documentary; Who Is Dayani Cristal? starring Gael García Bernal, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival; and Trophy, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by CNN Films and The Orchard. Tarrant and Bill Ackman executive produced the 2010 documentary Smash His Camera, about the life and career of paparazzi photographer Ron Galella. Directed by Leon Gast, it won the US Directing Award: Documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was later picked up by Magnolia Pictures and HBO.

Philanthropy In 2002, Tarrant helped launch the London-based charity Absolute Return for Kids.