Billionaire Larry Robbins' Glenview Capital crushes 2019 with eye-popping returns of nearly 30% after a year that lost the firm billions

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Glenview Capital founder Larry Robbins put up eye-popping 2019 returns

• Billionaire Larry Robbins' Glenview Capital had a banner year, posting returns of nearly 30% in its flagship fund when the average hedge fund returned just over 8%, according to Hedge Fund Research
• Glenview had lost billions in assets since 2017 after poor performance, though the firm said most of the redemptions have come from its long-only fund.
• While the firm more than tripled the returns of the average hedge fund, it still trailed the overall stock market, which finished 2019 up 33%, including dividends.
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Glenview Capital dominated 2019, finishing the year with returns that more than tripled the average competitor.

Larry Robbins' 29.91% returns for the year in his flagship fund marked a complete turnaround from 2018, when the firm lost 16% in its flagship fund and investors redeemed billions from the firm's hedge funds and long-only vehicle.

The $7.1 billion firm is back on the leaderboard in a year when the industry had its best showing, on average, in a decade, posting returns of more than 8%, according to Hedge Fund Research.

Glenview's flagship fund did not top the overall stock market, which surged 33%, including dividends, in 2019, though the firm's smaller Opportunity Fund posted returns of more than 50% for the year, according to a source close to the firm.

A spokesman for the firm declined to comment.

At the Sohn Investment Conference this year, Robbins focused his talk on healthcare companies, saying HMOs, or health maintenance organizations, like Cigna and Humana were severely undervalued. He predicted that Medicare-for-all, a policy idea that a majority of Americans support, would never take hold thanks to the Senate's political make-up.

He wasn't totally bullish on the healthcare industry, though, recommending people to short different pharmaceutical indices because of the President's ability to unilaterally reduce drug prices. He also said he was shorting 3M and Chemours because of the lawsuits they were facing from different states over pollution.

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