Lone Wolf Saved by Soros Trounces Peers With $1 Billion Fund
- Legg Mason Japan fund has risen fivefold even as market drops
- Veteran manager avoids exporters, favors new industries
Hideo Shiozumi.
Photographer: Akio Kon/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
In the early 1980s, Hideo Shiozumi walked out of his job as a fund manager and was planning to open a Japanese restaurant, when he got a call from George Soros.
It would change his life. The hedge fund manager, who he’d never even heard of, flew him to New York for an interview and persuaded him to pick stocks for the Quantum Fund. These days, Shiozumi is a one-man band running $1 billion and is beating his peers over pretty much any timeframe. His Japanese equity fund returned more than 400 percent since 1996, versus a 15 percent drop in the market, and he’s topping 98 percent of competitors in 2016.