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WELCOME

AGENDA

SPEAKERS

PANELS

SPONSORS

TRAVEL


 
 

Keynote Addresses

  • David Einhorn, Greenlight Capital
  • James Montier, Société Générale

    Panelists

  • William Ackman, Pershing Square Capital Management
  • James S. Chanos, Kynikos Associates
  • Jean-Marie Eveillard, First Eagle Global
  • Sean Fieler, Equinox Partners
  • Bruce C. N. Greenwald, Columbia Business School
  • Benjamin Hesse, Fidelity Investments
  • Beth Lilly, Woodland Partners, GAMCO
  • Michael Mauboussin, Legg Mason Capital Management
  • Bill Miller, Legg Mason Capital Management
  • Robert L. Rodriguez, First Pacific Advisors
  • Eric J. Schoenberg, Columbia Business School
  • Gregory Taxin, Spotlight Capital
  • Whitney R. Tilson, T2 Partners LLC
  • Jason Zweig, The Wall Street Journal

    David Einhorn - President, Greenlight Capital, Inc.

    David Einhorn is president of Greenlight Capital, Inc., which he co-founded in January 1996. Greenlight Capital is a value-oriented investment advisor whose goal is to achieve high absolute rates of return while minimizing the risk of capital loss.

    Greenlight’s investment philosophy is to combine the analytical discipline of determining fair value with a practical understanding of markets. The firm believes that an investment approach that emphasizes intrinsic value will achieve consistent absolute investment returns and safeguard capital regardless of market conditions.

    Prior to founding Greenlight Capital, Inc., David worked at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) as an analyst in the Investment Banking Group. At DLJ, he was involved in merchant banking, mergers and acquisitions and capital raising activities. After DLJ, Mr. Einhorn joined Siegler, Collery & Co., a buyout and investment management firm, as an investment analyst.

    David is Chairman of the Board of Greenlight Capital Re, Ltd. (NASDAQ:GLRE) and a Director of BioFuel Energy Corp. (NASDAQ:BIOF). He is the author of Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story, published in May 2008.

    David graduated summa cum laude with distinction in all subjects from Cornell University, where he earned a B.A. from the College of Arts and Sciences.

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    James Montier - Global Strategist, Société Générale

    James Montier is the Global Strategist at Société Générale. He has been the top rated strategist in the annual Extel survey for the last five years. He is visiting fellow of Durham University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. James has written two books on behavioural finance (both published by Wiley, Behavioural Finance in 2000, and Behavioural Investing in 2007).

    James has been described as London’s best known research brain by the Financial News, a maverick by the Sunday Times, an enfant terrible by the FAZ, an iconoclast by the FT and a prophet by Fast Company! When not reading, writing or speaking James can usually be found swimming with sharks and blowing bubbles at fish.

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    William A. Ackman - Founder and Managing Member, Pershing Square Capital Management, LP

    Bill Ackman is the managing member and portfolio manager of Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P., a concentrated research-intensive fundamental value investor in long and occasionally short investments in the public markets with assets under management of approximately $6 billion. Pershing Square has played an active role in creating value at companies including Wendy's International, McDonald's, Ceridian Corporation, and Sears Canada.

    Prior to forming Pershing Square, Mr. Ackman co-founded Gotham Partners, L.P., a public and private equity investment partnership. Prior to Gotham Partners, Mr. Ackman began his career in real estate investment banking at Ackman Brothers & Singer, Inc.

    Mr. Ackman received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College magna cum laude and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

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    James S. Chanos - President, Kynikos Associate

    Jim Chanos is the founder and Managing Partner of Kynikos Associates. As the largest exclusive short selling investment firm, Kynikos provides investment management services for both domestic and offshore clients. Through investment funds, partnerships, corporations and managed accounts, both domestic and offshore, Kynikos Associates maintains private portfolios of securities for clients. The funds, Ursus and Kynikos Opportunity, attempt to profit from the unusually high alphas found on the long and short side of the U.S. and non-U.S. equity markets.

    Mr. Chanos opened Kynikos Associates in 1985 to implement investment strategies he had uncovered while beginning his Wall Street career as a financial analyst with Paine Webber, Gilford Securities and Deutsche Bank. Throughout his investment career, Mr. Chanos has identified and sold short the shares of numerous well-known corporate financial disasters; among them, Baldwin-United, Commodore International, Coleco, Integrated Resources, Boston Chicken, Sunbeam, Conseco and Tyco International. His celebrated short-sale of Enron shares was recently dubbed by Barron’s as the market call of the decade, if not the past fifty years.

    Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mr. Chanos currently lives in New York with his four children and is active in many charitable foundations and educational institutions. Mr. Chanos received his BA in economics and political science in 1980 from Yale University.

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    Jean-Marie Eveillard - Lead Portfolio Manager of Global Overseas, Gold, U.S. Value & Overseas Variable Funds, First Eagle

    Born in Poitiers, France in 1940, Mr. Eveillard is a graduate of Écoles des Hautes Études Commerciales, an esteemed French graduate school for economic studies. He started his career in 1962 with Societe Generale, one of France's largest banks, until relocating to the United States in 1968. Two years later, Mr. Eveillard began as an analyst with the SoGen International Fund. In 1979, he was appointed as the portfolio manager of the SoGen International Fund, later named the First Eagle Global Fund. He then went on to manage the First Eagle Overseas and First Eagle Gold Funds at their inception in 1993 as well as the First Eagle U.S. Value Fund, which began in September 2001. Mr. Eveillard left his portfolio management duties on December 31, 2004 but continued to serve as Senior Vice President and Senior Adviser to the funds.

    Mr. Eveillard was named Morningstar's International Manager of the Year in 2001, and in 2003 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Morningstar for building one of the most successful long-term records in the investment business.

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    Sean Fieler - Managing Member, Equinox Partners

    Sean Fieler graduated from Williams College in 1995 with a degree in Political Economy and was the 1994 recipient of the Branson Memorial Scholarship. Upon completion of his undergraduate studies, he joined Equinox Partners, L.P. In 2001, he was named a managing member of Equinox Partners, L.P. and the Kuroto Fund, L.P.

    Over the past fourteen years, Sean Fieler and his partner, William Strong, have assembled a research team capable of analyzing businesses around the world, a capability that has enabled Equinox Partners to consistently purchase securities at substantial discounts to their intrinsic value. This process is the key to Equinox Partners’ superior track record, a 13.3% compounded annual return (S&P 6.9%), net of all fees, since its inception in November 1994.

    Mr. Fieler is the president of the Williams Catholic Network and a board member of the Witherspoon Institute, Institute for American Values, and the Dominican Foundation.

    Mr. Fieler lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife, son and daughter.

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    Bruce Greenwald - Professor, Columbia Business School

    Bruce currently serves as the Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Finance and Asset Management and the Director of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business. He presently teaches Value Investing, Economics of Strategic Behavior, Seminar in Strategy and Industry Analysis, Globalization of Markets, and Strategic Management of Media. He has also taught Corporate Finance and Managerial Economics.

    Previously, Bruce taught at Harvard Business School and Wesleyan University. Early in his career, he was a research economist at Bell Laboratories and, for a one-year period beginning in 1987, was the staff economist for the Presidential Task Force on Market Mechanisms (the Brady Task Force).

    Bruce has been the recipient of numerous teaching awards including the Columbia University Presidential Teaching Award (1999-2000), the Margaret Chandler Memorial Award for Commitment to Excellence in Teaching (1997 & 2003), the Singhvi Prize (1991-1992, 2002-2003, 2003-2004), and the Dean's prize for course development in the core curriculum.

    Bruce is the author or editor of several books including Competition Demystified: A Radically Simplified Approach to Business Strategy (with Judd Kahn, Putnam Penguin 2005), Economics for an Imperfect World: Essays in Honor of Joseph E. Stiglitz (editor with Richard Arnott, et al, MIT Press, 2003), Towards a new Paradigm in Monetary Economics (with Joseph Stiglitz, Cambridge Press, 2003), Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond (with Judd Kahn, et al, Wiley, 2001), and Adverse Selection in the Labor Market (Garland Press, 1980).

    Bruce has written numerous papers published in journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Rand Journal of Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Finance and Accounting, Quarterly Journal of Economics and Journal of Industrial and Corporate Change.

    Bruce has received a B.S. and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an M.P.A. and MS from Princeton University.

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    Benjamin Hesse - Portfolio Manager, Fidelity Investments

    Benjamin Hesse is a research analyst and portfolio manager for Fidelity Investments, the largest mutual fund company in the United States, the No. 1 provider of workplace retirement savings plans and a leading online brokerage firm. He manages Select Business Services and Outsourcing Portfolio and Fidelity Select Brokerage and Investment Management Portfolio and co-manages VIP Financial Services Portfolio, Fidelity Select Financial Services Portfolio, Fidelity Advisors Financial Services Portfolio and Fidelity Financials Central Fund.

    Mr. Hesse joined Fidelity in August 2005 as an equity research analyst following the processing and analytics industries. He assumed responsibility for Select Business Services and Outsourcing Portfolio in March 2006. He managed Fidelity Select IT Services Portfolio from March 2006 until November 2007. In June 2007, Mr. Hesse began managing Fidelity Select Brokerage and Investment Management Portfolio. He began co-managing VIP Financial Services Portfolio, Fidelity Select Financial Services Portfolio, Fidelity Advisors Financial Services Portfolio and Fidelity Financials Central Fund in October 2008.

    Previously, Mr. Hesse served as a small cap generalist at Credit Suisse Asset Management in New York in the summer of 2004. Mr. Hesse received a bachelor of arts degree in finance from Michigan State University in 1999, a master of arts degree in economics from New York University in 2003, and an MBA from Columbia Business School in 2005.

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    Beth Lilly - Portfolio Manager, Gabelli Asset Management

    Beth Lilly is a Senior Vice President and Portfolio Manager at Gabelli Asset Management. Gabelli Asset Management is a research intensive, fundamental investor with assets under management of over $25 Billion. Beth manages the Gabelli Woodland Small Cap Value fund as well as actively involved in the overall Small Cap research effort at Gabelli.

    In 2002, Beth merged the firm she co-founded, Woodland Partners LLC, into Gabelli Asset Management. Woodland Partners continues as a division of Gabelli Asset Management,

    Beth began her career at Goldman Sachs in 1985 as a research analyst following international oil companies. She then joined Fund American Companies in Greenwich, CT where she was an analyst under well known value investor Robert W. Bruce.

    Beth received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Hobart/William Smith where she graduated with High Honors. She received her CFA designation in 1989.

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    Michael J. Mauboussin - Chief Investment Strategist, Legg Mason Capital Management

    Michael J. Mauboussin is Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management. Prior to joining LMCM, Michael was a Managing Director and Chief U.S. Investment Strategist at Credit Suisse. Michael joined CS in 1992 as a packaged food industry analyst. He is a former president of the Consumer Analyst Group of New York and was repeatedly named to Institutional Investor’s All-America Research Team and The Wall Street Journal All-Star survey in the food industry group.

    Michael is the author of More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places—Updated and Expanded (New York: Columbia Business School Publishing, 2008), named best business book by BusinessWeek and best economics book by Strategy+Business. He is also co-author of Expectations Investing: Reading Stock Prices for Better Returns (Harvard Business School Press, 2001).

    Michael has been an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia Business School since 1993. BusinessWeek’s Guide to the Best Business Schools (2001) highlighted Michael as one of the school’s “Outstanding Faculty,” a distinction received by only seven professors.

    Michael is on the Board of Trustees and Science Steering Committee at the Santa Fe Institute, a leading center for multi-disciplinary research in complex systems theory. He received a B.A. in government from Georgetown University.

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    Bill Miller - Chairman, Chief Investment Officer, and Portfolio Manager, Legg Mason Capital Management

    Bill Miller is one of today's most renowned professional money managers. He is Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Legg Mason Capital Management, Inc.

    Bill Miller currently manages the Legg Mason Value Trust and Legg Mason Opportunity Trust mutual funds. Legg Mason Value Trust is the only mutual fund to outperform the S&P 500 for 15 consecutive calendar years, period ending 01/01/06. Over the years, Bill Miller and his team have received numerous accolades for their management record and distinct style, which focuses on a detailed understanding of businesses and their intrinsic value.

    His unique investment management philosophy and approach to undervalued stocks has also made him the subject of profiles in numerous books as well as publications, including The New York Times, Barron's, Business Week , Kiplinger's , Money , The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and SmartMoney.

    He was ranked among the top 30 most influential people in investing when he was named a member of the "Power 30" by SmartMoney. He was also named by Money magazine as "The Greatest Money Manager of the 1990's" and named Morningstar's 1998 "Domestic Equity Manager of the Year." In 1999, he was selected as the "Fund Manager of the Decade" by Morningstar.com. Also in 1999, Barron's named him to its All-Century Investment Team and BusinessWeek called him one of the "Heroes of Value Investing."

    Bill assumed overall responsibility for Legg Mason's equity funds management group in late 1990. Prior to this, he co-managed the Legg Mason Value Trust with Ernie Kiehne since its inception in 1982. He was the Director of Research of Legg Mason from October 1981 through June 1985. He earned his economics degree from Washington and Lee University where he graduated with honors in 1972. Subsequent to graduation, he served as a Military Intelligence Officer overseas and then pursued graduate studies in philosophy in the Ph.D. program at The Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining Legg Mason in 1981, he served as Treasurer of the J.E. Baker Company, a major manufacturer of products for the steel and cement industries. Bill received his CFA designation in 1986.

    Bill currently serves as Chairman on the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute, one of the world's leading scientific research laboratories, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in complex systems theory.

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    Robert L. Rodriguez, CFA - Chief Executive Officer, First Pacific Advisors

    Robert L. Rodriguez, CFA, is Chief Executive Officer of First Pacific Advisors, LLC (FPA), which currently manages approximately $8.6 billion of institutional and mutual fund assets.

    Mr. Rodriguez joined the firm in 1983 and is President and Chief Investment Officer of FPA Capital Fund, an open-end small/mid cap value equity fund, and FPA New Income, a high-quality open-end intermediate bond fund. He is also lead manager of institutional separate accounts. Mr. Rodriguez supervises approximately $6.0 billion.

    Mr. Rodriguez is a three-time recipient of Morningstar Mutual Fund Manager of the Year Award. The general objective of Mr. Rodriguez's research is to identify stocks that are attractive from a classic value style discipline, in areas that are perceived to be out of favor, with strong balance sheets, solid or improving fundamentals, and a strong competitive position in their industry. He avoids rapidly growing companies because they rarely meet his valuation criteria. His fixed-income strategy is one of winning by not losing. Capital preservation with a focus on total return is paramount in his management. High-quality bonds, along with selected high-yield securities are generally utilized.

    Mr. Rodriguez currently serves as a board member for the USC Center for Investment Studies and the USC Marshall School of Business Board of Leaders. He was also the recipient of the Marshall School of Business 1997 Alumni Award for Business Excellence.

    Mr. Rodriguez’s prior experience includes serving as Vice President and Senior Portfolio Manager in the Chairman’s Department of Kaufman & Broad, Inc. He was also a Portfolio Manager at Transamerica Investment Services, Inc. He began his investment career in 1971.

    Mr. Rodriguez, a Chartered Financial Analyst, received a BS in business administration (Magna Cum Laude) and an MBA, both from the University of Southern California.

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    Eric J. Schoenberg - Adjunct Associate Professor, Columbia Business School

    Professor Schoenberg studies the psychology of money, with a particular emphasis on intergenerational wealth transfers and behavior in financial markets.

    His career has encompassed both practical experience and theoretical study in business, as Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer of Broadview International, a boutique investment bank; in government, as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. State Department; and in academia, having received a PhD in Psychology from Columbia University, an MBA in Decision Science from the Wharton School, an MSE in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and an AB in Biology from Harvard.

    Dr. Schoenberg teaches a course in behavioral economics and decision making.

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    Gregory Taxin - Spotlight Capital

    Prior to joining Spotlight Capital, Mr. Taxin was co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Glass Lewis, an independent research firm that analyzes the corporate governance and accounting practices of more than 15,000 public companies in 65 countries. Mr. Taxin served as the spokesman for the firm and was quoted as an expert on corporate governance and accounting integrity in more than 450 articles in the financial press and made appearances on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, MarketWatch, NPR and CNN. Mr. Taxin also spoke at more than 40 conferences and made two appearances before the SEC. Calling him a "hardliner on investor rights," Treasury and Risk Management magazine named Mr. Taxin one of the "One Hundred Most Influential People in Finance" in 2006. Mr. Taxin was previously a senior investment banker at Banc of America Securities and Epoch Partners, both in San Francisco. Mr. Taxin was also a Vice President in the investment banking department of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and was an attorney with the New York corporate law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. He is a magna cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics, and summa cum laude graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.

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    Whitney R. Tilson - Managing Partner, T2 Partners LLC & Tilson Mutual Funds

    Whitney Tilson is the founder and Managing Partner of T2 Partners LLC and the Tilson Mutual Funds. The former (www.T2PartnersLLC.com) manages three value-oriented private investment partnerships, T2 Accredited Fund, Tilson Offshore Fund and T2 Qualified Fund, while the latter is comprised of two valuebased mutual funds, Tilson Focus Fund and Tilson Dividend Fund (www.tilsonmutualfunds.com).

    Mr. Tilson is also the co-founder, Chairman and co-Editor-in-Chief of Value Investor Insight (www.valueinvestorinsight.com), an investment newsletter, and is the co-founder and Chairman of the Value Investing Congress (www.valueinvestingcongress.com), a biannual investment conference in New York City and Los Angeles.

    Mr. Tilson writes a regular column on value investing for the Financial Times and Kiplinger’s, has written for the Motley Fool and TheStreet.com, was one of the authors of Poor Charlie’s Almanack, the definitive book on Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, and teaches financial statement analysis and business valuation for the Dickie Group. He was one of five investors included in SmartMoney’s Power 30, was named by Institutional Investor as one of 20 Rising Stars, has appeared dozens of times on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, Fox Business Network, Lou Dobbs Moneyline and Wall $treet Week, was on the cover of the July 2007 Kiplinger’s, has been profiled by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and has spoken widely on value investing and behavioral finance. He served on the Board of Directors of Cutter & Buck, a public company that designs and markets upscale sportswear for two years until the company was sold in early 2007.

    Prior to launching his investment career in 1999, Mr. Tilson spent five years working with Harvard Business School Professor Michael E. Porter studying the competitiveness of inner cities and inner-city-based companies nationwide. He and Professor Porter founded the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, of which Mr. Tilson was Executive Director. Mr. Tilson also led the effort to create ICV Partners, a national for-profit private equity fund focused on minority-owned and inner-city businesses that has raised nearly $500 million. Before business school, Mr. Tilson was a founding member of Teach for America, the national teacher corps, and then spent two years as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group.

    Mr. Tilson received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School, where he was elected a Baker Scholar (top 5% of class), and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, with a bachelor’s degree in Government.

    Mr. Tilson’s parents are both educators and he spent much of his childhood in Tanzania and Nicaragua. Consequently, Mr. Tilson is involved with a number of charities focused on education reform and Africa. For his philanthropic work, he received the 2008 John C. Whitehead Social Enterprise Award from the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York. He is Chairman of the Manhattan chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization. Mr. Tilson lives in Manhattan with his wife and three daughters.

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    Jason Zweig - Columnist, The Wall Street Journal

    Jason Zweig is the investing and personal finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of “Your Money and Your Brain,” on the neuroscience of investing (Simon & Schuster, 2007). Zweig is also the editor of the revised edition of Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor (HarperCollins, 2003), the classic text that Warren Buffett has described as “by far the best book about investing every written.”

    From 1995 through 2008 he was a senior writer for Money magazine; before joining Money, he was the mutual funds editor at Forbes. Zweig has also been a guest columnist for Time magazine and cnn.com. He has served as a trustee of the Museum of American Finance, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, and sits on the editorial boards of Financial History magazine and The Journal of Behavioral Finance. A graduate of Columbia University, Zweig lives in New York City.

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