James S. Chanos
Kynikos Associates, LP
Jim Chanos is the founder and Managing Partner of Kynikos Associates LP. As the world’s largest exclusive short selling investment firm, Kynikos Associates LP provides investment management services for domestic and offshore clients. Through investment funds, partnerships, corporations, and managed accounts – domestic and offshore – Kynikos Associates LP maintains private portfolios of securities for clients. The Ursus, Kriticos and Kynikos Opportunity funds seek 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 LP 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 dubbed by Barron’s as “the market call of the decade, if not the past fifty years.” The media has noted his prescience in alerting finance ministers and others about the global financial crisis well before if occurred. His views on the lessons from the crisis, capital markets regulation, and investment strategies, among other topics, are regularly covered by news organizations worldwide.
Mr. Chanos is chairman of the Coalition of Private Investment Companies, whose members are diverse in their size and investment strategies. The members’ clients include pension funds, asset managers, foundation, other institutional investors, and qualified wealthy individuals. In that role, Mr. Chanos has testified before Congress and provided comments to regulations proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom. (Learn more at: www.hedgefundfacts.org and www.financialdetectives.org.)
Mr. Chanos is currently a Lecturer in Finance and Becton Fellow at the Yale School of Management, teaching a class on the history of financial fraud.
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mr. Chanos lives in New York City, and has four children. He is President of the Board of Trustees of The Browning School, and serves as a Trustee at The Nightingale-Bamford School and The New-York Historical Society. Mr. Chanos received his BA in economics and political science in 1980 from Yale University.
Presentations:
- April 2012
A Search for Global Value . . . TRAPS! Spring 2012 - April 11 - October 2010
A Walk on the (Asian) Wild Side Fall 2010 - October 19 - October 2015
Energy Investments After the Fall: Opportunity or Slippery Slope? Fall 2015 - Oct. 20
Conferences:
- Fall 2017 - Oct. 10
- Fall 2015 - Oct. 20
- Fall 2013 - Oct. 22
- Spring 2012 - April 11
- Fall 2010 - October 19
- Fall 2008 - October 21
- Fall 2007 - September 25
- Fall 2005 - October 26
- Fall 2003 - November 13
- Spring 2001 - May 2
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Upcoming Conferences
October 23, 2019 - New York
April 21, 2020 - New York
October 20, 2020 - New York
Past Conferences & Presentations
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Past Speakers
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Past Conference Books
Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
By Savine Hossenfelder
Floored!: How a Misguided Fed Experiment Deepened and Prolonged the Great Recession
By George Selgin
Trump, the Blue-Collar President
By Anthony Scaramucci
Finance and Philosophy: Why We’re Always Surprised
By Alex J. Pollock
John Law: A Scottish Adventurer of the Eighteenth Century
By James Buchan
More Past Conference Books >
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