Julian Robertson: Tiger Management, 31.7% for 18 Years, and the Hedge Fund Dynasty

In May 1980, a forty-seven year old former U.S. Navy officer and Kidder Peabody veteran named Julian Robertson founded a hedge fund in New York City with eight point eight million dollars in capital. He named it Tiger Management. He was relatively late to the hedge fund industry. The original generation of hedge fund pioneers, Alfred Winslow Jones, Michael Steinhardt, George Soros, had been running funds for decades by then. Robertson’s launch was modest in scale and unremarkable in framing. The fund employed a long-short equity strategy, took concentrated positions in companies it had researched in depth, and relied on disciplined risk management to control downside. There was nothing in the structure that signaled what would come.

What came was one of the most extraordinary track records in the history of active management. From inception in May 1980 through the asset peak in August 1998, Tiger Management compounded capital at thirty-one point seven percent net annual returns. The S&P 500 over the same period compounded at twelve point seven percent. Tiger lost money in only four of its twenty-one operating years. By 1998, the fund’s assets under management had grown from the original eight point eight million dollars to twenty-two billion dollars. Even after the difficult 1999 and 2000 years that preceded the fund’s closure, the full twenty year track record still averaged approximately twenty-six percent net annually.

The single most consequential decision Robertson made was not opening Tiger in 1980. It was closing it in March 2000, at the precise peak of the dot-com bubble. Tiger had spent the preceding two years short of expensive technology stocks and long undervalued old-economy companies. The market had moved relentlessly against both sides of the trade. Investors had been redeeming capital. Internal pressure had been mounting from analysts who wanted to participate in the bubble. Robertson refused to alter the strategy. When he could no longer justify managing outside capital under conditions where he believed the market was structurally mispriced and his investors no longer had the patience to wait for the correction, he returned the remaining seven point seven billion dollars to outside investors and shut the fund.

The closure decision is one of the most controversial moments in modern hedge fund history. Within a year of the closure, the technology stocks Robertson had been short collapsed catastrophically. The value stocks he had been long substantially outperformed. The strategy he had abandoned at the closure was vindicated within twelve months. Robertson himself, trading his own capital after Tiger closed, produced spectacular returns. Between 2000 and 2008, his personal return on capital was approximately four hundred and three percent, including a seventy-six point seven percent gain in 2007 from short positions in subprime mortgage securities and credit default swaps.

This is the story of how a North Carolina-born Navy officer became one of the most successful hedge fund managers in American history, what he built at Tiger Management, the dynasty of Tiger Cubs and Grand Cubs that traces its lineage back to him, and what his career means for working traders trying to compound capital through long-short equity frameworks of their own.

Salisbury, Chapel Hill, and the Navy

Julian Hart Robertson Jr. was born on 25 June 1932 in Salisbury, North Carolina, a small city of approximately twenty thousand people in the central Piedmont region. His father was a textile executive. His mother was a homemaker. The family was solidly upper middle class within the Salisbury context, but the cultural distance between Salisbury in the 1930s and 1940s and the New York financial industry that Robertson would later dominate was substantial. The Southern, slow-moving, relationship-based business culture of his youth would inform both his personal style and his investment philosophy throughout his career.

He attended local public schools and enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied business administration. He graduated in 1955. The UNC connection would become significant later in his life, particularly through the Robertson Scholars Program, a major scholarship initiative he funded across UNC and Duke beginning in the 2000s. The Carolina identity was not just biographical for Robertson. It was central to his self-conception throughout his career.

After graduation, Robertson served as an officer in the U.S. Navy. The Navy experience produced two specific traits that would inform his subsequent career. First, the discipline required to function effectively in a hierarchical command structure under stress translated directly into the operational discipline he would later impose on his analysts at Tiger. Second, the Navy’s emphasis on detailed preparation before any operational engagement informed the research-intensive approach Tiger would later become known for. Robertson did not discover the value of preparation when he started Tiger. He had been operating that way since he was a junior officer.

After leaving the Navy, Robertson joined Kidder Peabody in New York City as a stockbroker. He spent twenty-two years at the firm, eventually rising to become CEO of the investment advisory subsidiary in 1974. The Kidder Peabody period was unusually long for someone who would later launch a hedge fund. Robertson did not leave the firm to start Tiger until 1978, by which point he was forty-six years old and had spent more than two decades in institutional finance.

The New Zealand year and the unpublished novel

In 1978, Robertson left Kidder Peabody and took an unusual step for someone in his position. He moved to New Zealand for what was intended to be a one year sabbatical. He spent the year writing a novel. The novel was never published. Robertson has subsequently described the period as one of the most important in his career, partly because it gave him the time and distance to think clearly about what he wanted to do next, and partly because the failure to complete the novel in publishable form taught him something important about the gap between competence in one domain and competence in another.

The detail of the New Zealand year matters because it illustrates something important about Robertson’s character. He was forty-six years old, had been a successful executive at Kidder Peabody for two decades, and had every conventional reason to continue on the path he was on. He stepped back instead. He took a year out to write a novel that he privately hoped would launch a literary career. When the novel did not work, he did not pretend it had. He acknowledged that the writing project was a failure and pivoted to what he actually understood, which was investing.

The willingness to acknowledge failure rather than rationalize it would later become a core feature of Tiger’s investment culture. Tiger analysts were expected to identify their mistakes openly, debate them rigorously, and adjust positions accordingly. The cultural norm came directly from Robertson’s personal capacity to acknowledge that his New Zealand novel was not going to work and to redirect his efforts accordingly. The intellectual humility to acknowledge failure rather than rationalize it is one of the rarest traits in active management, and Robertson modeled it for his analysts from the founding of Tiger.

Tiger Management and the long-short framework

Robertson returned from New Zealand to New York in 1980 and founded Tiger Management with eight point eight million dollars in capital. His initial partner was Thorpe McKenzie, a Tennessee-based investor who provided much of the early capital. The fund was structured as a long-short equity hedge fund, which was a relatively unusual structure in 1980. The long-short framework that A. W. Jones had pioneered in 1949 had become more common during the 1960s but had largely fallen out of favor in the 1970s as the broader hedge fund industry contracted.

The Tiger framework rested on a small number of principles that Robertson would apply consistently for the next two decades. First, deep fundamental research on individual companies. Tiger analysts were expected to know the operating businesses of their long and short positions in detail, often through on-site visits with management teams and operational personnel. Second, concentrated positions in highest-conviction ideas rather than diversified exposure across many marginal ideas. Third, both long and short exposure simultaneously, allowing the fund to profit from both undervalued companies that would appreciate and overvalued companies that would correct. Fourth, dynamic adjustment of net market exposure based on the opportunity set rather than fixed allocation rules.

The early Tiger years emphasized value investing in the traditional sense. Robertson looked for companies trading at substantial discounts to their intrinsic business value, regardless of growth profile. As Tiger grew and Robertson hired more analytical talent, the framework evolved. By the late 1980s, Tiger was investing more aggressively in growth companies, on the premise that the analytical capability the firm had built could project the growth trajectory of these companies more accurately than the broader market could. The shift from pure value to a value plus growth framework is a structural feature that working traders should think carefully about. The investment principle that produced Tiger’s early returns was not value per se. It was the analytical edge that came from doing more rigorous fundamental work than the competition. As the analytical capability grew, the universe of opportunities the firm could exploit expanded.

The mid-1980s and early 1990s were Tiger’s most consistently successful period. The fund grew from the original eight point eight million dollars to several billion dollars in assets under management. Annual returns averaged in the thirty to forty percent range over multiple years. Tiger became one of the most respected hedge funds on Wall Street, and Robertson became one of the most sought-after speakers at investment conferences.

1986 and the Institutional Investor article

The 1986 Institutional Investor cover story on Tiger Management is one of the underappreciated turning points in modern financial history. The article highlighted the extraordinary returns Tiger had been producing through its first six years of operation. It described the analytical framework Robertson had built. It explicitly framed Tiger as a model that other investors should study. Within months of publication, capital began flowing into the broader hedge fund industry at a rate that had not been seen since the 1960s. The modern emergence of hedge funds as a major institutional asset class is conventionally dated to that article and the wave of capital it triggered.

The structural lesson here for working traders is that the Tiger track record was not the result of secret techniques or proprietary indicators. It was the result of doing more rigorous fundamental work than the competition, applied with discipline across long and short positions, sized concentrated where conviction supported the concentration. The reason the Institutional Investor article triggered such a substantial capital inflow into hedge funds is that the Tiger model was, in its essential elements, accessible to any investor willing to do the analytical work. The model was not magic. The execution was disciplined. The discipline was unusual.

The 1987 crash and the test of conviction

One of the most instructive episodes in Tiger’s history is how the fund navigated the October 1987 stock market crash. The crash produced a single-day decline of approximately twenty-two percent in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the largest single-day percentage decline in American stock market history. Tiger had been running with substantial long exposure into the crash. The fund took meaningful losses on the day.

What Robertson did next is the relevant detail. Rather than reducing exposure aggressively or shifting to defensive positioning, he and his team conducted accelerated fundamental research on the companies Tiger held long. They concluded that the underlying businesses were structurally unaffected by the market dislocation, that the post-crash valuations were now substantially below intrinsic value, and that the appropriate response was to add to the long positions rather than reduce them. Tiger added meaningfully through the post-crash period and benefited substantially from the subsequent recovery.

The episode illustrates a structural feature of how Robertson thought about market events. Price movements were data, not signals. The relevant question was always whether the underlying business value of the companies Tiger held had changed. If the business value was unchanged and the price had moved against the position, the appropriate response was usually to add rather than reduce. The discipline to separate price action from underlying value is one of the hardest psychological frameworks for retail traders to internalize, and it was central to how Tiger operated under Robertson.

The 1996 BusinessWeek article and the litigation

In April 1996, BusinessWeek published a cover story by reporter Gary Weiss titled “Fall of the Wizard,” which was critical of Robertson’s recent performance and of his management style at Tiger. The article was published during a period of relatively weak Tiger returns and argued that the fund was structurally too large to continue producing the returns that had made it famous. Robertson responded by suing Weiss and BusinessWeek for one billion dollars for defamation. The lawsuit was eventually settled with no money changing hands, though BusinessWeek stood by the substance of its reporting.

The episode is part of the public record and is worth engaging with honestly. The lawsuit was widely viewed within the financial industry as an overreaction. The reporting in the BusinessWeek article was substantive, even if its tone was unflattering. The decision to sue rather than respond through performance was not Robertson’s best moment. The episode is included here because the most useful biographical accounts engage honestly with both the strengths and the difficult elements of their subjects’ careers, and Robertson’s response to public criticism was at times intemperate in ways that did not serve his long-term reputation. Working traders should be clear-eyed about this. The strength of a long-term track record does not depend on the figure being unable to be criticized. It depends on the consistency of the underlying process across cycles.

The 1998 peak and the unraveling

By August 1998, Tiger Management’s assets under management had reached twenty-two billion dollars, making it one of the two or three largest hedge funds in the world. The fund had returned an average of more than thirty percent annually since inception. Robertson’s personal wealth was estimated in the billions. The Tiger model appeared to be at the peak of its effectiveness.

The unraveling began with the Russian financial crisis and the Long-Term Capital Management collapse in late 1998. Tiger had positions across multiple emerging markets that suffered substantial losses during the crisis. The fund also held meaningful Japanese yen positions that produced significant losses during a sharp one-day move. The combination of losses across multiple positions during the crisis period was the largest single drawdown in Tiger’s history.

By itself, the 1998 drawdown would have been recoverable. Robertson had managed through difficult periods before. What made 1999 and 2000 different was that the post-crisis market environment moved in directions that were structurally hostile to Tiger’s framework. The technology bubble that began accelerating in 1998 and 1999 produced extraordinary returns in stocks that Tiger could not justify owning at those valuations. Tiger’s largest equity holding by 1999 was U.S. Airways, where the fund controlled approximately twenty-five percent of the company. The airline’s operational difficulties dragged Tiger’s performance further. Investors began redeeming capital. By the closure announcement in March 2000, Tiger had experienced approximately seven point seven billion dollars in net redemptions since the August 1998 peak.

March 2000: closing at the bubble peak

On 30 March 2000, Robertson announced that Tiger Management would cease managing outside capital and would return the remaining six billion dollars to investors. The announcement was, as it turned out, almost perfectly timed. The NASDAQ Composite peaked on 10 March 2000, twenty days before the closure announcement. The technology stocks Tiger had been short for the preceding two years began their catastrophic decline within weeks of Robertson’s decision to stop fighting them.

Robertson’s closing letter to investors is one of the most important documents in modern hedge fund history. The letter acknowledged that Tiger had been wrong on technology valuations from the perspective of the market’s recent behavior, but maintained that the underlying analytical framework was sound and that the eventual correction was inevitable. The letter spoke of “the demise of value investing” as a market regime feature rather than as a permanent shift in how markets work. The letter ended with the observation that there was no quick end in sight to the bear market in value stocks, but that the end of the bear market would come, and that equities producing fifteen to twenty-five percent cash on cash returns would eventually be recognized as the great investments they were.

The letter was, in essence, vindicated within twelve months. The dot-com collapse that began in spring 2000 wiped out approximately seventy-eight percent of the NASDAQ Composite over the following two and a half years. Many of the technology stocks Tiger had been short went to zero. The value stocks Tiger had been long substantially outperformed during the same period. The strategy Robertson had abandoned at the closure was, in retrospect, almost exactly correct in its analysis of the structural mispricing.

The painful structural lesson is that being right is not the same as being able to remain in the position long enough for the rightness to be recognized. Tiger had to close because the redemption pressure from outside investors had become too large to manage while maintaining the framework. The framework itself was correct. The investor base could not maintain the patience required for the framework to work. Robertson chose to close the fund rather than either abandon the framework or run it down further with redemptions accelerating. The decision preserved the analytical integrity of his work. It did not preserve the institutional structure that had been built around it.

The 2007 subprime trade and the post-Tiger decade

Robertson did not retire from active investing after closing Tiger. He continued to manage his own substantial personal capital using the same long-short framework that had defined Tiger. The post-Tiger decade produced returns that were, in some ways, even more impressive than the Tiger years.

The 2007 subprime trade is the most famous example. By early 2007, Robertson had concluded that the U.S. subprime mortgage market was structurally overextended, that mortgage-backed securities backed by subprime loans were substantially overvalued, and that the credit derivatives market that had developed around these securities was systematically mispricing the underlying default risk. He deployed substantial personal capital into short positions on subprime mortgage securities through credit default swaps. When the subprime crisis materialized later that year and accelerated through 2008, Robertson’s positions produced approximately seventy-six point seven percent returns on the deployed capital.

The full personal return from Tiger’s closure in March 2000 through the beginning of 2008 was approximately four hundred and three percent. The returns were generated using the same long-short framework Tiger had used, applied to global markets including currencies, commodities, and credit derivatives in addition to equities. The returns demonstrated that the framework Robertson had built was not specifically tied to the institutional structure of Tiger Management. It was tied to the analytical discipline he had developed over decades.

The Tiger Cubs and the dynasty

The most durable element of Robertson’s legacy may not be the Tiger track record itself, but the dynasty of hedge funds founded by his former analysts. The Tiger Cubs, as they became known, are a group of approximately thirty hedge funds founded by analysts who trained under Robertson at Tiger Management before launching their own firms. The Tiger Grand Cubs are a second generation, founded by former employees of the original Tiger Cubs. As of recent reporting, more than two hundred hedge funds globally trace their lineage back to Tiger Management.

The most prominent first-generation Tiger Cubs include Stephen Mandel of Lone Pine Capital, Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital, John Griffin of Blue Ridge Capital, Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global, Chase Coleman of Tiger Global, Philippe Laffont of Coatue, and Bill Hwang of Tiger Asia and later Archegos. The list of names is, taken together, one of the most consequential rosters of hedge fund managers in industry history. The fact that they all trained under one investor, in one institutional framework, over roughly two decades, is one of the more remarkable facts in modern finance.

Robertson himself was deliberate about the mentorship. He hired analysts based on a specific profile that combined intelligence, analytical rigor, intellectual honesty, and a particular kind of competitive intensity. He has been quoted on the importance of competitiveness in his hiring decisions, arguing that the analyst who refuses to be beaten in performance terms simply will not be beaten in performance terms. The Tiger hiring process used a long structured test specifically designed to identify the competitive trait. The analysts the test selected for would later become the Tiger Cubs. The selection criteria, applied consistently across two decades of hiring, produced the dynasty.

After Tiger closed in 2000, Robertson formalized the mentorship structure through what became known as Tiger Seeds. He provided capital, infrastructure, and operational support to former Tiger analysts launching their own funds, in exchange for an equity stake in the management company. By 2009, he had seeded approximately thirty-eight hedge funds through this structure. The Tiger Seeds program institutionalized the mentorship that had previously been informal and ensured that the analytical framework Robertson had built would continue to influence active management long after his own direct trading activity ended.

What Robertson means for your trading practice

Robertson’s career maps onto Mind, Method, Money in ways that translate directly to retail traders, even though most retail traders cannot deploy capital at the institutional scale Tiger operated.

Mind. Develop the temperamental capacity to separate price from value. The single most important psychological feature of how Robertson operated was his ability to treat price movements as data rather than as signals. When the market moved against a Tiger position, the question was always whether the underlying business value had changed. If the value was unchanged, the position remained valid regardless of the price action. The retail equivalent is to develop the discipline to evaluate positions based on the analytical thesis rather than based on the recent profit and loss. The trader who closes positions because the price has moved against them, without reevaluating the underlying thesis, is operating on momentum rather than on analysis.

Method. Combine fundamental research with both long and short positioning. The Tiger framework was a long-short framework, not a long-only framework. The willingness to short overvalued companies in addition to going long undervalued companies expanded the opportunity set substantially and provided structural hedging during difficult market periods. The discipline to maintain both long and short exposure simultaneously is hard for retail traders to internalize, partly because the cultural and institutional features of retail brokerage encourage long-only exposure. The traders who learn to operate on both sides of the market have access to a structural opportunity set that long-only operators do not.

Money. Concentrate where conviction is highest. Tiger’s positions were concentrated, not diversified. The analytical work the firm did on individual companies was deep enough to support concentrated positions in the companies where the analysis was strongest. The retail equivalent is not to take leveraged bets that could blow up the account. It is to recognize that returns are produced by the highest-conviction ideas and to size positions accordingly. The trader who diversifies away conviction by sizing every idea identically is also diversifying away the returns that come from concentration. The mathematics of compounding rewards conviction, properly sized.

The last word

Julian Robertson died on 23 August 2022 at the age of ninety. He had remained active as an investor and philanthropist into his late eighties, continuing to seed Tiger Cubs through the Tiger Seeds program and to support a wide range of educational, environmental, and medical research initiatives through the Robertson Foundation. His net worth at death was estimated in the billions. The Robertson Scholars Program at UNC and Duke, the Robertson Foundation, and the various other philanthropic initiatives he funded will continue to operate for generations.

The thirty-one point seven percent compound annual returns over Tiger’s first eighteen years stand as one of the most extraordinary track records in the history of active management. The full twenty year average, including the difficult final years, was approximately twenty-six percent annually. The post-Tiger decade produced personal returns of approximately four hundred percent. The Tiger Cubs and Grand Cubs continue to operate hedge funds whose collective assets under management exceed several hundred billion dollars. The dynasty Robertson built will, in some form, outlast him by decades.

What Robertson leaves the working trader is a framework that is, in its essential elements, completely accessible. Do more rigorous fundamental research than your competition. Operate on both sides of the market through long and short positions. Concentrate where conviction is highest. Treat price as data, not as signal. Maintain the analytical framework through difficult periods rather than abandoning it when the market is disagreeing. None of these requirements depend on Tiger’s institutional infrastructure or on Robertson’s particular Carolina background. They depend on discipline applied with consistency over decades.

The most uncomfortable truth in Robertson’s career is also one of the most important to engage with honestly. Tiger Management closed because the institutional structure could not maintain patience long enough for the analytical framework to be vindicated. The framework was correct. The investors could not wait. The lesson, for working traders, is that the structures around you matter as much as the analysis you do. Build a structure, whether institutional or personal, that allows you to maintain your framework through the periods when the market is disagreeing with it. Without that structure, even correct analysis can be forced out at the worst possible moment.

“Equities with cash-on-cash returns of fifteen to twenty-five percent regardless of their short-term market performance are great investments.” — Julian Robertson

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Julian Robertson?

Julian Hart Robertson Jr. was an American hedge fund manager who founded Tiger Management Corporation in 1980. Born on 25 June 1932 in Salisbury, North Carolina, he became one of the most successful long-short equity investors in American financial history. From inception in 1980 through the asset peak in August 1998, Tiger compounded capital at approximately 31.7% net annually compared to 12.7% for the S&P 500. He closed Tiger in March 2000 at the peak of the dot-com bubble. He died on 23 August 2022 at the age of 90. His legacy includes the Tiger Cubs and Tiger Grand Cubs, a dynasty of more than 200 hedge funds founded by analysts who trained under him.

What was Tiger Management?

Tiger Management was the long-short equity hedge fund Robertson founded in May 1980 with $8.8 million in capital. The fund grew to approximately $22 billion in assets under management by August 1998, making it one of the two or three largest hedge funds in the world at that time. Tiger employed a deeply research-intensive approach, taking concentrated long positions in companies it believed were undervalued and short positions in companies it believed were overvalued. The fund lost money in only four of its 21 operating years. Tiger closed to outside investors in March 2000 at the peak of the dot-com bubble and returned approximately $6 billion in remaining capital to outside investors.

Why did Tiger Management close?

Tiger Management closed in March 2000 primarily because the late 1990s technology bubble had moved relentlessly against Tiger’s positioning, and because outside investor patience for the value-based framework Robertson had built had eroded to the point where redemptions were forcing the fund to liquidate positions at the worst possible time. Tiger had been short of expensive technology stocks and long undervalued old-economy companies for two years. The market had moved against both sides of the trade. Approximately $7.7 billion in redemptions had occurred between the August 1998 asset peak and the March 2000 closure announcement. Robertson chose to close the fund rather than either abandon the analytical framework or continue managing through accelerating redemptions. The closure occurred 20 days after the NASDAQ Composite peaked on 10 March 2000.

What was Robertson’s return record?

From inception in May 1980 through the asset peak in August 1998, Tiger Management compounded capital at approximately 31.7% net annual returns compared to 12.7% for the S&P 500. Even including the difficult 1999 and 2000 years that preceded the fund’s closure, the full 20 year track record averaged approximately 26% net annually. Tiger lost money in only four of its 21 operating years. After Tiger closed in March 2000, Robertson continued to manage his own personal capital. Between March 2000 and January 2008, his personal return on capital was approximately 403%, including a 76.7% gain in 2007 from short positions in subprime mortgage securities.

Who are the Tiger Cubs?

The Tiger Cubs are a group of approximately 30 hedge funds founded by former analysts and portfolio managers from Tiger Management. The most prominent first-generation Tiger Cubs include Stephen Mandel of Lone Pine Capital, Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital, John Griffin of Blue Ridge Capital, Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global, Chase Coleman of Tiger Global Management, Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management, and Bill Hwang, who founded Tiger Asia and later Archegos Capital Management. The Tiger Grand Cubs are a second generation, founded by former employees of the original Tiger Cubs. As of recent reporting, more than 200 hedge funds globally trace their lineage back to Tiger Management.

What was the 2007 subprime trade?

In 2007, Robertson deployed substantial personal capital into short positions on U.S. subprime mortgage securities, primarily through credit default swaps. He had concluded that the subprime mortgage market was structurally overextended, that mortgage-backed securities backed by subprime loans were substantially overvalued, and that the credit derivatives market was systematically mispricing the underlying default risk. When the subprime crisis materialized later in 2007 and accelerated through 2008, Robertson’s positions produced approximately 76.7% returns on the deployed capital. The trade is considered one of the most successful single-year returns in his post-Tiger career.

What is Tiger Seeds?

Tiger Seeds is the formal mentorship and seeding structure Robertson established after closing Tiger Management in 2000. Through Tiger Seeds, Robertson provided capital, operational infrastructure, and ongoing mentorship to former Tiger analysts who were launching their own hedge funds, in exchange for an equity stake in their management companies. By September 2009, Robertson had seeded approximately 38 hedge funds through this structure. The Tiger Seeds program institutionalized the mentorship that had previously been informal at Tiger Management and ensured that the analytical framework Robertson built would continue to influence active management long after his own direct trading activity ended.

What is the Robertson Foundation?

The Robertson Foundation is the philanthropic organization Robertson founded in 1996 to support large-scale, domestic, high-impact grants in education, the environment, and medical research. The foundation has been one of the more substantial philanthropic operations in American finance, with grant-making activities that have included support for educational scholarship programs, environmental conservation organizations including Environmental Defense and the Wildlife Conservation Society, and various medical research initiatives. The Robertson Scholars Program, a major scholarship initiative across UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University, is one of the most prominent programs the foundation funds.