Tiger Global's PE chief and Flipkart's biggest backer Lee Fixel to resign

Lee Fixel, head of Tiger Global Management’s private equity business, is leaving the firm after more than a decade to manage his own money. Fixel, who’s a partner at the $26 billion firm, will depart on 30 June, Tiger Global said in an email to investors seen by Bloomberg. Scott Shleifer will take over as head of the unit. Fixel, 39, may start his own investment firm, according to the email.

Fixel led the $13 billion unit through deals that made billions of dollars in profit for the New York-based firm.

Tiger Global’s early investment in Flipkart, in 2009, eventually reaped about $3 billion after Walmart Inc. bought a majority stake in Flipkart last year. That return on investment, in dollar terms, was one of the largest for the unit at the time, Bloomberg previously reported. Fixel is also on the board of Flipkart.

Tiger Global also won a $1.6 billion cash dividend on its investment in e-cigarette startup Juul Labs Inc., which sold 35% of itself to tobacco giant Altria Group Inc. last year. Fixel had led the firm’s roughly $600 million investment in the company.

“Lee has been a driving force behind the expansion of Tiger Global’s private equity investing activities in the United States and India, and he has distinguished himself as a world-class investor across multiple sectors and stages," the firm said. “Lee expects to actively invest his own capital and may start an investment firm in the future."

As of May 2018, Tiger Global’s venture unit had made more than 200 investments in 30 countries, including an almost $2 billion position in Spotify Technology SA.

A Tiger Global spokeswoman declined further comment.

Fixel couldn’t be reached for comment.

Fixel grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and majored in finance at Washington University in St. Louis, spending time as an exchange student at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1999. He joined Tiger Global after working as an analyst at hedge fund Alkeon Capital Management.

Shleifer co-founded Tiger Global’s private equity business with Chase Coleman in 2003. Together they will continue as co-portfolio managers of that business, according to the email.

Coleman founded Tiger Global in 2001. He is a so-called “tiger cub", a term coined for alumni of Julian Robertson’s hedge fund Tiger Management, where Coleman was a technology analyst.