Israel Alexander Englander (born 1948) is an American billionaire

hedge fund A hedge fund is a Pooling (resource management), pooled investment fund that holds Market liquidity, liquid assets and that makes use of complex trader (finance), trading and risk management techniques to aim to improve investment performance and ...

manager. In 1989, he founded his hedge fund, Millennium Management, with Ronald Shear. The fund was started with million, and as of October 2024 had billion in

assets under management In finance, assets under management (AUM), sometimes called fund under management, refers to the total market value of all financial assets that a financial institution—such as a mutual fund, venture capital firm, or depository institutio ...

. As of March 2025, ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' estimated his net worth at US$14.2 billion.

Early life and education

Israel "Izzy" Englander was born in 1948 and was raised in a

Polish-Jewish The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jews, Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long pe ...

family in the

Crown Heights Crown Heights is a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Crown Heights is bounded by Washington Avenue to the west, Atlantic Avenue to the north, Ralph Avenue to the east, and Empire Boulevard to the so ...

neighborhood of

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

.Institutional Investor: "Izzy Englander's Growth Strategy for Millennium" by Stephen Taub
May 20, 2009 He was raised in a religious home and attended

yeshiva A yeshiva (; ; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are studied in parallel. The stu ...

. His father's entire family was killed in

the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. His Polish parents were deported to a Soviet labor camp after the war, where Englander's two older sisters were born. They then immigrated to the United States in 1947. Always interested in the stock market, Englander began trading stocks while in high school. During college, he interned at Oppenheimer & Co. (where his future brother-in-law, Jack Nash, would eventually become president and chairman) and at the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

. In 1970, he graduated from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

with a B.S. in finance. His first full-time job was with the

Wall Street Wall Street is a street in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs eight city blocks between Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway in the west and South Street (Manhattan), South Str ...

firm Kaufmann, Alsberg & Co. He later enrolled in New York University's MBA program in the evenings but never completed the degree.

Investment career

Early business career

At Kaufmann Alsberg, Englander focused on trading convertible securities and options. When the

American Stock Exchange NYSE American, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), and more recently as NYSE MKT, is an American stock exchange situated in New York City. AMEX was previously a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was known ...

began to list options, he purchased a seat on the exchange. In 1977, he formed a floor brokerage house, I.A. Englander & Co. In 1985, Englander and his partner John Mulheren Jr., started an investment firm called Jamie Securities Co. with a $75 million investment from the Belzberg family of Canada. Mulheren had previously worked as a trader for

Ivan Boesky Ivan Frederick Boesky (; March 6, 1937 – May 20, 2024) was a convicted criminal and an American stock trader who was infamous for his prominent role in an insider trading scandal in the mid-1980s. After getting caught he became a government ...

. In February 1988, when Boesky was later convicted of insider trading, and agreed to testify against Mulheren in a plea deal to receive a lesser sentence, Mulheren was arrested for carrying a loaded rifle and convicted of orchestrating illegal stock trades for Boesky, but the ruling was later overturned. Although Englander was never implicated in the matter in any way whatsoever, Jamie Securities was dissolved in 1988 due to the negative publicity in the aftermath of Mulheren's situation.

Millennium Management

In 1989, Englander started Millennium Management with Ronald Shear—whom he knew from his time at the

—with $35 million in seed money (including $5 million from Englander himself and another $2 million from the Belzberg family). The firm got off to a rough start and Shear left in 1990. Since then, Englander has grown Millennium into a $39.2 billion (under management) enterprise by using investment strategies like statistical arbitrage (quantitative analysis); fundamental long-short investing; merger

arbitrage Arbitrage (, ) is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more marketsstriking a combination of matching deals to capitalize on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which th ...

(taking advantage of price differentials between a buy-out target company's stock price and bid price) and

convertible arbitrage Convertible arbitrage is a market-neutral investment strategy often employed by hedge funds. It involves the simultaneous purchase of convertible securities and the short sale of the same issuer's common stock. The premise of the strategy is ...

(taking advantage of price differentials between a company's stock price and

convertible bond In finance, a convertible bond, convertible note, or convertible debt (or a convertible debenture if it has a maturity of greater than 10 years) is a type of bond that the holder can convert into a specified number of shares of common stock in ...

stock warrant In finance, a warrant is a security that entitles the holder to buy or sell stock, typically the stock of the issuing company, at a fixed price called the exercise price. Warrants and options are similar in that the two contractual financial ...

price). At any given time, Millennium holds thousands of investment positions and makes over 10 million trades on an average day. At the end of 2019, Millennium had 2,900 employees in more than 12 offices in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Personal life

Englander was married to Caryl (née Schechter) Englander until 2023. They have three children. In 2014, he bought a duplex apartment at New York City's

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a boulevard in New York City that carries north and southbound traffic in the borough (New York City), boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the wes ...

for million, a record price for a Manhattan co-op. In 2022, he acquired a $20 million apartment near

Les Invalides The Hôtel des Invalides (; ), commonly called (; ), is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and an old soldi ...

in Paris, formerly owned by the

Bettencourt The Bettencourt family is a French noble family of Norman origin. The head of the family in the 14th century, Jean de Béthencourt, organized an expedition to conquer the Canary Islands, resulting in his being made King of the Canary Islands by ...

family, founding family of

L'Oréal L'Oréal S.A. () is a French multinational personal care corporation registered in Paris

Wealth and philanthropy

In 2006, the Englander Foundation, headed by Englander and his wife, donated $20 million to mostly Jewish organizations and schools. Englander serves on the board of

Weill Cornell Medical College Weill Cornell Medicine (; officially Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University), originally Cornell University Medical College, is the medical school of Cornell University, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in Ne ...

and the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. In March 2019, he was named one of the highest-earning hedge fund managers and traders by ''

''.

References

External links

Opalesque.tv: Izzy Englander interview, part 2
retrieved March 23, 2013 {{DEFAULTSORT:Englander, Israel 1948 births American billionaires American derivatives traders American hedge fund managers American investors American money managers Philanthropists from New York (state) American stock traders Businesspeople from New York City Living people American philanthropists New York University Stern School of Business alumni 21st-century American Jews American people of Polish-Jewish descent