Speakers — Pasadena 2009
Zeke Ashton
is the founder and Managing Partner of Centaur Capital Partners, a Dallas-based value-oriented investment firm. He and co-portfolio manager Matthew Richey are the advisors to the Centaur family of private partnerships using a long / short equity strategy, and are the sub-advisors to the Tilson Dividend Fund, a mutual fund utilizing a unique, income-oriented value investing strategy.
John H. Burbank III
is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Passport Capital, LLC, a San Francisco global hedge fund. The firm manages over $2 billion. Passport employs macro-economic and sector analysis to identify opportunities from the long term expansion of leading emerging economies, select natural resource scarcity, and network business models common to the technology and service sectors. Investments primarily emphasize public equity securities. Passport also makes highly targeted investments in equity derivatives, select private companies, and swap contracts.
Mr. Burbank has over a decade of experience investing in global equity markets. Prior to founding the firm in 2000, he was a consultant to JMG Triton Offshore, Ltd. and before that was the director of research at ValueVest Management. He earned a B.A. from Duke and an M.B.A. from Stanford.
J. Carlo Cannell
has 16 years of experience investing in small caps and over 19 years of experience in analysis of technology companies. A graduate of Princeton, he attended New College, Oxford, and studied business at Templeton College. Mr. Cannell, a third generation investment manager, is the Managing Member of Cannell Capital LLC in Jackson, Wyoming.
David Chu
Prior to co-founding Soma Asset Management LLC, Mr. Chu was most recently with Scion Capital, LLC, a fundamental analysis, deep-value hedge fund with over $500 million in assets under management (AUM). While at Scion, Mr. Chu launched that firm's Asia office and served as the company's Executive Director responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations in Asia. Mr. Chu also worked extensively on Scion's large credit default swap portfolio.
Mr. Chu began his career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York in the Leveraged Structured Finance Group, where he completed high yield securities offerings and project finance transactions across numerous sectors. Additionally, Mr. Chu was a private equity executive both domestically and internationally, specializing in bankruptcy and distressed opportunities, and worked in financial operations for a technology company. Mr. Chu graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Brian Gaines
is the Founder and Managing Partner of Springhouse Capital. Prior to founding Springhouse in 2002, he worked for Gotham Capital. Mr. Gaines is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. He earned his BA from Brandeis and his MBA from Wharton.
Scott Klein
is Managing Partner and Portfolio Manager for Beach Point Capital Management with $3 billion under management. He has over 17 years of experience in managing high yield bonds, bank loans and distressed debt portfolios and restructuring companies in financial distress. Before founding Beach Point, Mr. Klein was Senior Managing Director at Post Advisory Group, where he spent over 12 years helping grow the company from under $200 million in assets to over $10 billion. In the early 1990s, he spent four years as a bankruptcy attorney at the law firm of Murphy, Weir and Butler. Mr. Klein received a bachelor's from Wharton (magna cum laude) and a J.D. from UCLA.
Igor Lotsvin
Prior to co-founding Soma Asset Management LLC, Mr. Lotsvin was a portfolio manager with Symphony Asset Management, LLC, a multi-strategy hedge fund and an asset management firm with over $7 billion in AUM. While at Symphony, Mr. Lotsvin was part of the portfolio management team working on the firm's flagship long/short equity hedge funds (with over $1 billion in AUM) and was lead portfolio manager on several long-only strategies. Mr. Lotsvin was instrumental in building Symphony's long-only strategies, having helped develop this business from concept to over $1.2 billion in AUM.
Prior to joining Symphony in 2003, Mr. Lotsvin was a High-Yield and Distressed securities analyst at Franklin Templeton, where he was responsible for coverage of multiple sectors including financials, media and real estate. Mr. Lotsvin represented Franklin in numerous high profile bankruptcies and restructurings and served on several creditors' committees. Mr. Lotsvin began his career in public accounting with Arthur Andersen, LLP. Mr. Lotsvin is a Certified Public Accountant, a Chartered Financial Analyst and earned an MBA degree from Harvard Business School.
David Nierenberg
is the Founder of the The D3 Family Funds, which manages $350 million in four private investment partnerships. Mr. Nierenberg serves on the Washington State Investment Board, which manages $80 billion of public employee retirement funds. He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.
Jed Nussdorf
is the Managing Member of Soapstone Capital. Prior to founding Soapstone in 2005, Mr. Nussdorf was a managing director at Force Capital Management from 2003-2005. He earned an M.B.A. from Wharton.
Dave Rabinowitz
runs Kirkwood Capital, the Atlanta-based investment fund he founded with Gotham Capital in 2002. Prior to founding Kirkwood, he worked as an attorney with the Special Matters department of King & Spalding in Atlanta. Mr. Rabinowitz has also been an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School's Value Investing program. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and Emory Law School.
Guy Spier
is the Principal of Aquamarine Capital Management LLC. The fund's market-beating returns have received mentions by Lipper and Nelson's world's best money managers. Mr. Spier graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Jason A. Stock
is a founding partner and Managing Member of M3 Funds, LLC. He is responsible for managing the trading and operational functions for the firm while actively participating in the portfolio management process. He has over 10 years of experience in the investment field with specific expertise in the banking sector. Prior to founding M3, Mr. Stock was the Head Trader at Hovde Capital Advisors, an investment manager for the Financial Institution Partners series of funds, where he was responsible for the trading and analysis of investment opportunities with an emphasis on community banks, thrifts, and mutual holding companies. Mr. Stock spent 6 years at Fidelity Investments in both Salt Lake City and San Francisco.Mr. Stock earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Charles de Vaulx
joined IVA (International Value Advisers, LLC) in May 2008 as Partner and Portfolio Manager. He is responsible for all investment decisions jointly with Charles de Lardemelle.
Until March 2007, he was Portfolio Manager of the First Eagle Global, Overseas, U.S. Value and Variable Funds, together with a number of separately managed institutional accounts. He was also solely responsible for the management of the Sofire Fund Ltd. during the time in which the fund won the Absolute Return Award back to back in 2005 and 2006 for “Fund of the Year” in the Global Equity category. Altogether, assets under Charles de Vaulx’s management totaled approximately USD $40 billion.
In addition to sharing Morningstar’s “International Stock Manager of the Year” award in 2001 with his co-manager, Charles was runner-up for the same Morningstar award in 2006.
Whitney R. Tilson
is the Founder and a Managing Partner of T2 Partners LLC, which manages three private investment partnerships and the Tilson Mutual Funds. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Value Investor Insight. Tilson has been a guest on Lou Dobbs Moneyline and Wall $treet Week, has been profiled by the Wall Street Journal and is a regular columnist for Financial Times. He is the Co-Founder and Chairman of the Value Investing Congress.
Glenn Tongue
is a Managing Partner of T2 Partners LLC and the Tilson Mutual Funds. Mr. Tongue spent 17 years on Wall Street, most recently as an investment banker at UBS, where he was a Managing Director and Head of Acquisition Finance. Before UBS, Mr. Tongue was at DLJ for 13 years, the last three of which he served as the President of NYSE-listed DLJdirect. Prior to that he was a Managing Director in the Investment Bank at DLJ, where he worked on over 100 transactions aggregating more than $40 billion.
William C. Waller
is a founding partner and Managing Member of M3 Funds, LLC. He has over 10 years experience analyzing and investing in the bank and thrift sector. Prior to M3, he was employed by Hovde Capital Advisors LLC, in Washington, DC, where he spent over six years working with the firm’s series of financial services sector investment funds. At Hovde, Mr. Waller worked in portfolio management, investment analysis, and risk management. Mr. Waller spent two years working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as an analyst and trading assistant at the firm of Dippell & Company, a registered competitive market maker. Mr. Waller has studied the banking and credit union system in the United States. Mr. Waller received his Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Utah.