The “D” that star hedgie David Einhorn is wearing these days isn’t necessarily a monogram on a tuxedo jacket.
In an annual report card handed out by hedge fund investors, the 46-year-old investor received the just-passing grade for his hedge fund last year.
Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital was ranked 53rd out of 58 hedge funds in the Hedge Fund Report Card put out by Institutional Investor’s Alpha on Thursday.
Investors slammed Einhorn for his lack of independent oversight and transparency.
It’s apparently not easy for investors to get their money out of the fund either — as they also gave Greenlight a poor ranking on “liquidity terms.”
This is the second year in a row that investors polled by Alpha have given Einhorn a “D.”
Of course, it likely didn’t help that Greenlight earned just 8.7 percent last year versus a 14 percent return, including reinvested dividends, for the S&P 500. Greenlight was down 2.5 percent in January.
Einhorn — who gained renown for pointing out the holes in Lehman’s balance sheet months before it went bankrupt in 2008 — was one of the bottom five hedge fund managers in several categories of the Alpha ranking.
In recent years, Einhorn’s reputation has been hurt as his short calls haven’t panned out.
After three years, he threw in the towel on his disastrous Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (now known as Keurig Green Mountain) short. Shares of his most recent public short — Athenahealth — which he announced at last May’s Ira Sohn Conference, have gained 22 percent since then.
The top-rated hedge fund in Alpha’s report card was UK’s Egerton Capital, with second place going to Greenwich, Conn.-based Silver Point Capital, a distressed debt firm founded by Goldman Sachs alums Edward Mule and Robert O’Shea.
Fourteen hedge funds got an A grade, including Ken Griffin’s Citadel, ranked third, and Richard Perry’s Perry Capital, which nailed fifth place.