Guy Spier

Guy Spier (; born February 4, 1966) is a Zurich-based Swiss-German-Israeli investor. He is the author of ''The Education of a Value Investor''. Spier is the manager of the Aquamarine Fund with $400 million in assets. He is well known for bidding US$650,100 with Mohnish Pabrai for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett in 2008. In 2009, he was featured in '' The Checklist Manifesto'', by Atul Gawande regarding his use of checklists as part of his investment process. He is the brother of Tanya de Jager and the grandson of Selmar Spier, the German-Israeli jurist, historian, foreign correspondent and farmer.

Education and early life

Spier was born in 1966 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. When he was three months old, his family moved to Tel Aviv, Israel, where he attended kindergarten. In 1970, his family moved to Iran, where he attended the British Embassy School in Tehran. In 1977, his family moved again to Richmond in the UK, and he attended the City of London Freemen's School, in Ashtead, Surrey, as a weekly boarder. In 1984, he matriculated to study law at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Hugh Collins, Peter Birks and Mary Stokes, among others. Two years later, in 1986, he switched to study PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics). Among his tutors was Peter Sinclair for Economics – where he occasionally shared tutorials with David Cameron, who would go on to become Prime Minister. He also studied politics with Vernon Bogdanor. Although he was thoroughly mediocre at Politics, he proved to be a capable economist and graduated with a First-class degree, having also been awarded the Georg Webb Medley Prize for his performance in Economics.

During his university summers, Spier also completed courses of study at Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg and at Harvard Summer School. He also interned with Creditanstalt in London.

In 1990, Spier was offered places both in the Joint Business and Economics PhD program and at the MBA Program at Harvard. He opted to do the MBA and, in 1993, he completed his MBA. Contemporaries at HBS include Mark Pincus, Chris Hohn and Sherry Coutu.

Career

From 1988 to 1990, Spier was an associate at Braxton Associates, the strategy consulting firm which was later sold to Deloitte Consulting. Based out of the London and Paris offices, Spier worked with colleagues David Pitt-Watson, Michael Liebreich, and others in advising British and European companies on their strategy vis-a-vis the European Common market. He subsequently took up an internship at the Forward Studies Unit (Cellule de Prospective) at the European Commission in Brussels.

In his book, Spier writes that although he interviewed with white-shoe firms like Goldman Sachs and J. P. Morgan during his last year at Harvard Business School, he turned down these firms to work for the lesser-known D.H. Blair. There, as a Vice President, he sought funding for new technology startups. Spier subsequently described this experience as "not dissimilar" to the movie '' Wolf of Wall Street''. It was a career decision that he quickly came to regret.

Upon leaving investment banking, Spier founded the Aquamarine Fund, an investment partnership inspired by, and styled after, Warren Buffett's 1950s investment partnerships. Spier continues to manage the fund today, and it had $300 million in AUM as of June 2021.

Spier follows closely Warren Buffett's principles on value investing and capital allocation. However, he also admits that value investing has changed over time as the popularity of the style means that generally fewer opportunities are available to investors. Ideas that will work would still be around, but the successful value investor of today has to look further and sometimes think outside the box. More recently, Spier has eschewed all forms of activism, stating, "My goal as an investor is to compound money for my shareholders, not to pick unnecessary fights or conduct myself like an avenging moral crusader."

Spier has regularly advocated for probity and modesty in the management of financial firms. In 2008, Spier published a paper along with Peter Sinclair and Tom Skinner on "Bonuses, Credit Rating Agencies and the Credit Crunch" which argued that part of the cause of the 2008 crisis was short-termism leading to the miscalculation of bonuses at credit rating and other financial firms. He has also strongly advocated in favor of zero management fees when it comes to professional investment management. Spier has advocated for Switzerland to become a centre of true investing excellence, writing "while Switzerland's biotech, health and technology clusters are extraordinarily well developed, Swiss private banking still has a long way to go".

In 2003, along with David Einhorn, Bill Ackman, and Whitney Tilson, Spier became the target of investigations by Eliot Spitzer, then the New York Attorney General, as well as by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding short sales of Farmer Mac, MBIA, and Allied Capital. The meltdown of these companies during the 2008 financial crisis vindicated their short thesis and became the subject of books by Ackman and Einhorn.

In 2014, Palgrave MacMillan published ''The Education of a Value Investor'' which narrates Spier's early career struggles in investment banking on Wall Street and his transformation into a value investor. The book has sold more than 175,000 copies in English and has been translated into Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Polish, Hebrew, and Vietnamese.

In 2016, Spier, along with Phil Town and Matthew Peterson, successfully petitioned Judge Sontchi at the Delaware Court of Bankruptcy to form an official committee of equity holders of head Corporation which had filed for bankruptcy earlier that year.

In 2019, in a YouTube interview with Tilman Versch of ValueDACH, Spier likened the art of stock picking to "drunks in bars" also referencing Dan Bilzerian.

In 2020, Spier hosted a panel on "The Future of Intelligent Investing" with Niall Ferguson, Sandy Climan, and Daniel Aegerter.

Spier hosts an annual investment conference in Klosters called "VALUEx". Attendees have included Joe Chapman, Richard Reese, the former CEO of Iron Mountain, and Robert Leitz.

Spier is an occasional financial commentator in the media.

In 2022, the final Glide Foundation charity lunch with Warren Buffett sold for $19,000,100 which is thirty times more than the sum that Spier and Pabrai paid.

Spier claims to have spent more than 10 years in Jungian Psychotherapy

Public Commentary

Role of Paparazzi in British Public Life

In 1997, Spier spoke out in ''The Independent'' against the increasing intrusion of paparazzi in British public life, writing ''"...if such a regime had been in place before last weekend, every tabloid which published photographs of Princess Diana and Dodi on their summer holidays would have been required to pay the resulting profits to them. I do not think that it would take too fine a legal mind to distinguish between public events, such as speeches and hospital visits, and private events, such as a ski trip with one's children or a ride in a car with a friend.''"

Hershey Trust

In 2002, writing for the ''Financial Times'', Spier questioned the motives of the directors of the Hershey Trust Company for selling out their stake asking, ''"Why would anybody in their right mind want to trade a significant share of Hershey, with its excellent characteristics, for an insignificant share of a hotchpotch of US business, probably chosen by some adviser who is better at getting selected than at delivering investment performance?"''.

Economic Policies of Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss

In 2022, Spier took issue with the economic policies of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. In an opinion piece for Financial Times he wrote,

''"Investors like myself are looking for such jurisdictions and regions – where there is a government that takes intelligent decisions and allocates resources rationally.''

''The UK used to be such a country. But increasingly it is deviating from that path. Despite having a well-educated labour force, plenty of capital and the intangible infrastructure of a developed country, it is slipping down the ranks."''.

India's Sovereign Rating

In 2024 Spier joined V. Anantha Nageswaran in calling for a revision of India's current BBB- sovereign credit rating

Arguing in an article for Horasis that, ''"India Deserves a Better Credit Rating and a Stronger Role for Local Rating Agencies"''. Spier makes no secret of his investment in Care Ratings which stands to benefit from greater involvement of local ratings agencies in the rating of sovereign debt.

Public Talks

Spier regularly addresses students and other audiences at universities including MIT, Ivey School of Business, Harvard Business School, Guanghua School of Management and Google.

From 2000 to 2005, Spier served as the President of the Oxford Alumni Association of New York with the close support of Amanda Pullinger. Under his and Pullinger's leadership, the association grew to over 5,000 members and was a pioneer in bringing an American style approach on alumni relations to a British university. From 2007 to 2009, Spier served on the advisory board of the Dakshana Foundation.

Spier has frequently promoted India as an attractive investment destination. In an interview with the Economic Times of India he stated ''"I think that India is going to be an exciting place to be for the next 50 years."''

In 2017, Spier joined the newly formed board of the Swiss Friends of Oxford University. He also serves on the board of UN Watch and on the advisory boards of Horasis and World Minds. He is also a member of the International Council of the Global Leadership Foundation, which was founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner F. W. de Klerk.

Value investing community

Spier has been increasingly in the spotlight for more than a decade. In 2010, one episode of the documentary series 'Legends & Leaders in Hedge Funds and Finance,' directed by Matthias Knab, was focused on him and his investing style. The website Dataroma tracks the portfolio of Guy Spier among other value oriented Superinvestors by extracting data from financial filings.

Spier is known for mentoring young investors and being an active member of the value investing community. He often engages with other investors through interviews, podcasts, and social media, fostering a sense of community and collaboration. His talks often focus on the psychological aspects of investing, ethical considerations, and the importance of continuous learning.

Spier organizes VALUEx BRK, which is organized in conjunction with the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. Spier is known for founding the VALUEx conference in Klosters in 2011 and organizing it yearly. It brings together a small group of value investors from around the world to discuss investment ideas, share insights, and network in an informal and collaborative setting.

Personal life

Spier lives in Zurich with his wife Lory and three children – Eva, Isaac and Sarah. He is related to the Lazard, Speyer and Rothschild banking families through his great-great-grandmother, Johanna Lazard. He is 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 and of the Westminster Synagogue.

References

External links

personal websiteBlogPodcast with British journalist Christina PattersonThe Intelligent Investing Podcast with Eric SchleienAuthors at Google Talk

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spier, Guy
1966 births
Living people
21st-century British non-fiction writers
Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford
German investors
Harvard Business School alumni
Israeli investors
People educated at City of London Freemen's School
People from Pietermaritzburg
English Jews
South African financiers
South African investors
Swiss investors
Swiss financiers
21st-century Swiss Jews
Jewish non-fiction writers
Heidelberg University alumni