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Guy Spier

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Guy Selmar Spier
Born (1966-02-04) February 4, 1966 (age 58)
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
NationalityGerman, Israeli, South African
Alma materCity of London Freemen's School
Oxford University
Harvard Business School
Occupation(s)Investor, Aquamarine Fund

Guy Spier is a Zurich-based investor and author of a book on investing entitled The Education of a Value Investor.[1] He is well known for bidding US$650,100 with Mohnish Pabrai for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett in June 2007.[2] In 2009, he was featured in "the Checklist Manifesto", by Atul Gawande regarding his use of checklists as part of his investment process.[3]

Spier manages the Aquamarine Fund, an investment partnership inspired by, and styled after Warren Buffett's 1950s investment partnerships. He is also an occasional financial commentator in the media.[4]

Philanthropy

Spier serves as the chair and founder of the Weizmann Science and Business Club. He is a member of the Harvard Business School Alumni Board and also serves on advisory boards of Value Conferences; and of Zurich Minds.

Guy Spier and former President of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk in discussion at the Horasis 2013 Annual Meeting

From 2007 to 2009, Spier served on the Advisory Board of the Dakshana Foundation

In spring 2010, Spier with Peter Hogenkamp and Tim Dührkoop co-founded TEDxZurich.

Farmer Mac, Allied Capital and Eliot Spitzer

In 2003, Spier became the target, along with David Einhorn, Bill Ackman, and Whitney Tilson, of investigations by Eliot Spitzer,[5] then the New York Attorney General, as well as by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding short sales of Farmer Mac, MBIA corp and Allied Capital. The melt down of these companies during the late-2000s financial crisis vindicated[6] their short thesis and was the subject of books by Ackman[7] and Einhorn.[8]

Education and background

Spier was educated in England at City of London Freemen's School. From 1988 - 1990, Spier worked with David Pitt-Watson at Braxton Associates, which later became Deloitte Consulting. In 1991, he was an intern at the European Commission in Brussels. He completed his MBA at the Harvard Business School, class of 1993 with Mark Pincus, Chris Hohn and Sherry Coutu. He holds a First Class degree in PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) from Oxford University where he studied at Brasenose College.[9]

Spier is related to the Lazard banking family through his great great grandmother, Johanna Lazard.[10] He is also a former resident of Tuxedo Park, New York, the village constructed by Pierre Lorillard in the late 1800s, where he lived in the Bruce Price Cottage. He is a member of Entrepreneurs' Organization and of the Young Presidents Organization.

Horsehead Holdings and Aquamarine fund performance

Spier underperformed S&P 500 for the last 10 and 5 years suffering big losses in 2015 and early in 2016 (-28,7%). Horsehead Holding (more than 10% of the fund) filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2016. Spier blames Greywolf Capital hedgefund for trying to take advantage of shareholders by buying debt of Horsehead and forcing company in bankruptcy. Most of the positions in Spier's fund are copied from Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway portfolio (American Express, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, General Motors, Berkshire itself, etc.). But his fund underperformed Berkshire Hathaway stock since inception by big margin.

In 2016 Horsehead Holdings, one of Spier's portfolio companies unexpectedly filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. In some cases, this resulted in Spier receiving hate mail directly from certain Horsehead shareholders who had blindly followed him and Mohnish Pabrai into the stock withouth doing their own research[11].

It has lead to entries like this one on wikipedia.

References

  1. ^ Spier, Guy. The Education of a Value Investor. Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 1137278811.
  2. ^ "Buffett Charity Auction Winners Gain More Than Just Steak Lunch". Bloomberg. June 29, 2009.
  3. ^ "Book Review: 'The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right".
  4. ^ "Guy Spier says no reason to be scared of US financials". Washington Post. October 31, 2011.
  5. ^ "The Hedge Fund Witch Hunt: Eliot Spitzer's latest investigation is pursuing the wrong guys". Slate Magazine. Feb 13, 2003.
  6. ^ "MBIA falls 13% after Moody's cuts rating Two-notch downgrade was more than some expected; Ambac cut to Aa". MarketWatch. June 20, 2008.
  7. ^ Christine Richard. Confidence Game: How Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman Called Wall Street's Bluff.
  8. ^ Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long, Short Story, David Einhorn: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470073942.html
  9. ^ Catherine Mayer (September 11, 2008). "David Cameron: UK's Next Leader?". Time Magazine.
  10. ^ "Descendents of Wolf Speyer Spier, Merzhausen" (PDF).
  11. ^ "Kirill Pavlov Email Exchange with Guy Spier". SlideShare.
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