Bill Hwang was born Sung Kook Hwang in South Korea in 1964, the son of a pastor, and immigrated to the United States in 1982 to Las Vegas, then moved to Los Angeles in 1983 afte…
Bill Hwang was born Sung Kook Hwang in South Korea in 1964, the son of a pastor, and immigrated to the United States in 1982 to Las Vegas, then moved to Los Angeles in 1983 after his father's death. ◦ He earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics/business from UCLA and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, then started at Hyundai Securities in New York and Peregrine Investments, where he met Julian Robertson and joined Robertson's Tiger Management. ◦ When Robertson closed Tiger Management in 2000, he provided Hwang $25 million to launch his own Tiger Asia Management fund, which grew to over $5 billion before suffering heavy losses during the 2007-09 recession. ◦ Hwang was a former protégé of hedge-fund titan Julian Robertson who founded Tiger Asia Management LLC in 2001, running over $5 billion at its peak, before converting it into the family office renamed Archegos. ◦ Hwang closed Tiger Asia and opened Archegos, a family office managing roughly $10 billion, which used total return swaps to take highly leveraged positions while circumventing disclosure requirements. ◦ He co-founded the Grace and Mercy Foundation, which held more than $500 million in assets by 2018 and was a major benefactor to evangelical organizations including Focus on the Family, the Museum of the Bible, and various churches. ◦ Hwang was found guilty on July 10, 2024 on 10 of 11 counts including racketeering, conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud, and was sentenced on November 20, 2024 to 18 years in prison. ◦
Hwang said of his method: "I try to invest according to the Word of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit." ◦ On the role of investing he said: "Helping companies establish an appropriate market price by making investments and supporting them to do well is all part of doing God's work," and "In many countries, people make 'speculations' rather than investments. While reading the Bible I realized that God likes setting a fair value." ◦ On his giving and motives he said: "I'm decreasing the amount of money under my name, in order to do things that God loves," and "I do it because I like God more than I like money," and when asked whether God loved his work: "Do I think God loves it? Of course!" ◦ He said he invested in companies that benefit society, citing LinkedIn as an example. ◦ Under Robertson's mentorship, Hwang absorbed value-investing principles emphasizing concentrated positions in undervalued companies with strong fundamentals, disciplined risk management, and enduring drawdowns without panic selling. ◦
Unlike traditional hedge funds that diversify across sectors and regions, Hwang took a high-conviction, concentrated approach focusing heavily on Asian markets, with early successes including bets on Chinese internet stocks, particularly Tencent. ◦ His top five stocks made up 80% of his portfolio and 360% of his net exposure, and Archegos used between 8 and 20 times leverage, employing roughly $160 billion in leverage to control a portfolio worth around $100 billion. ◦ Archegos built more than $100 billion in market exposure through concentrated equity bets and total return swaps in stocks such as ViacomCBS, Discovery, Baidu, Tencent Music and Vipshop; a critical weakness was that too much exposure sat in a narrow group of stocks. ◦ Hwang described his stance toward risk: "In a way, it's a fearless way to invest. I'm not afraid of death or money." ◦ When ViacomCBS announced a stock offering after a rapid rally and the stock fell sharply, banks demanded more collateral, Archegos could not meet the margin calls, and counterparties rushed to sell first and sell fast. ◦ Hwang used total return swaps to gain the benefits of owning an asset without actually owning it, allowing him to keep regulators and the public in the dark; when a core holding dropped sharply, his extreme leverage triggered massive margin calls he could not meet and he lost $20 billion in just two days. ◦
Hwang absorbed value-investing principles emphasizing concentrated positions in undervalued companies with strong fundamentals, disciplined risk management, and enduring drawdowns without panic selling. ◦ He viewed money instrumentally, stating: "Money for me is like fire. I love fire, I love watching fire. I love using fire to heat up my home, cooking." ◦ He understood investing as a form of divine service, saying that helping companies establish an appropriate market price by making investments and supporting them to do well is all part of doing God's work. ◦ He operated from a stance of extreme risk fearlessness, describing his approach as "a fearless way to invest" and stating, "I'm not afraid of death or money." ◦
Hwang earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics/business from UCLA and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, then started at Hyundai Securities in New York and Peregrine Investments, where he met Julian Robertson and joined Robertson's Tiger Management. ◦ Under Robertson's mentorship at Tiger Management, joined in 1996, Hwang absorbed value-investing principles emphasizing concentrated positions in undervalued companies with strong fundamentals, disciplined risk management, and enduring drawdowns without panic selling. ◦ He took a high-conviction, concentrated approach focusing heavily on Asian markets, with early successes including bets on Chinese internet stocks, particularly Tencent. ◦ Archegos built more than $100 billion in market exposure through concentrated equity bets and total return swaps in stocks such as ViacomCBS, Discovery, Baidu, Tencent Music and Vipshop. ◦ Hwang used total return swaps to gain the benefits of owning an asset without actually owning it, allowing him to keep regulators and the public in the dark. ◦
Hwang described his stance toward risk: "In a way, it's a fearless way to invest. I'm not afraid of death or money." ◦ On wealth he said: "Money for me is like fire. I love fire, I love watching fire. I love using fire to heat up my home, cooking," adding "I go to nice restaurants. I confess to you I cannot live very poorly. But I live a few notches below where I could live." ◦ On his upbringing he said: "I grew up in a pastor's family. We were poor, but somehow my mother and father always gave things away." ◦ He framed his investment strategy in explicitly religious terms, stating that he tries to invest according to the Word of God. ◦ He also said that helping companies establish an appropriate market price is part of doing God's work. ◦
Hwang stated, "I try to invest according to the Word of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit," and said, "I do it because I like God more than I like money." ◦ ◦ Yet in 2012 Tiger Asia Management and Hwang admitted to illegal insider trading in Chinese bank stocks, paying settlements totaling over $60 million, and he was banned from trading in Hong Kong for four years in 2014. ◦ He claimed to support fair value and benefit society, citing LinkedIn as an example. ◦ However, Archegos collapsed in March 2021, with the manipulated stocks losing approximately $100 billion in value and major banks losing a combined sum in the billions. ◦ ◦ Under Robertson, Hwang absorbed value-investing principles that included disciplined risk management, yet his critical weakness was holding too much exposure in a narrow group of stocks, using between 8 and 20 times leverage to build more than $100 billion in market exposure. ◦ ◦ ◦ While he co-founded the Grace and Mercy Foundation and said he was decreasing the amount of money under his name to do things God loves, his personal net worth plummeted from roughly $36 billion to about $55 million when Archegos collapsed. ◦ ◦ ◦ He was found guilty on July 10, 2024 on 10 of 11 counts including racketeering, conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud. ◦
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