Mitchell R. Julis (born April 14, 1955) is an American businessman and co-founding partner of Los Angeles hedge fund

Canyon Capital Advisors Canyon Partners, LLC is an employee-owned hedge fund founded by Joshua S. Friedman and Mitchell R. Julis in 1990 located in Los Angeles, California.

.The 50 Largest US Hedge Fund Managers
Hedge Fund Journal. Accessed Apr, 2010.

Early life and education

Born to a

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

family,Institutional Investor Magazine: "Canyon Capital Thrives in a Transforming Financial Landscape" by Imogen Rose-Smith
October 02, 2014 the son of Thelma (née Rabinowitz) and Maurice Julis. His parents were both immigrants: his father was of Greek-Jewish descent and worked as a social studies teacher and junior high school assistant principal; while his mother was of

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 ...

descent and worked as a speech therapist. When he was a youth, his family moved from New York City to

Rockland County, New York Rockland County is the southernmost county on the west side of the Hudson River in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the county's population is 338,329, making it the state' ...

. Mitchell attended the Woodrow Wilson School at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, graduating in 1977 with a bachelor of arts degree magna cum laude. He then earned a Juris Doctor degree, magna cum laude, from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

and a Master of Business Administration with honors from

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate school, graduate business school of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university. Located in Allston, Massachusetts, HBS owns Harvard Business Publishing, which p ...

. During his years at Harvard, Julis became friends and roommates with

Joshua S. Friedman Joshua S. Friedman (born 1956) is an American businessman and co-founder of Los Angeles–based hedge fund Canyon Capital Advisors, Canyon Partners. Early life and education Friedman grew up near Boston. His father was a mechanical engineer wh ...

, with whom he would later form Canyon.

Early career

A summer internship with a bankruptcy firm in Los Angeles lessened Julis’ interest in practicing law. Dissatisfied with the experience, he began writing articles about the uses of bankruptcy in the entertainment industry. In 1982, Julis was reporting an article for ''Los Angeles Magazine'' about getting rich in a recession, which led him to interview Henry Wilf, an employee of bond trading firm

Drexel Burnham Lambert Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. was an American multinational investment bank that was forced into bankruptcy in 1990 due to its involvement in illegal activities in the junk bond market, driven by senior executive Michael Milken. At its height, i ...

. The conversation convinced Wilf that Julis would be better suited to investing than to journalism. In 1982, Julis took a job as a bankruptcy and creditors’ rights attorney at New York law firm Wachtell, Litpton, Rosen & Katz. Julis and Wilf stayed in touch and Wilf introduced Julis to Lowell Milken, the younger brother of Drexel chief Michael Milken. In November 1983, Julis joined

Founding Canyon

Julis and Friedman founded Canyon Capital Advisors in 1990, after

was closed in 1990. Canyon is a multi-strategy hedge fund that invests in such asset classes as bank debt, high yield and distressed securities, securitized assets and equities. According to Forbes.com, Julis was the 28th highest earning hedge fund manager in 2014 earning $150 million. Canyon's flagship Value Realization fund scored a net return of 18.06% in 2014.

Personal

Julis has served on the advisory council of Princeton's Department of Economics. In addition to the gift to establish the center, the Julis family also created the Julis Foundation Preceptorship at Princeton in 2007. The center is named in honor of his father and mother, Maurice Julis and Thelma Rabinowitz Julis who taught in New York during the 1970s. In 2015, Julis made a gift to Harvard Law School to establish the Julis-Rabinowitz Program in Jewish and Israeli Law. The inaugural director of the program is the Professor

Noah Feldman Noah Raam Feldman (born May 22, 1970) is an American legal scholar and academic. He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and chairman of the Harvard Society of Fellows. He is the author of 10 books, host of the podcas ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Julis, Mitchell R. American business executives Businesspeople from the Bronx 20th-century American Jews American people of Greek-Jewish descent American people of Polish-Jewish descent Princeton University alumni Harvard Business School alumni Harvard Law School alumni Living people 1955 births 21st-century American Jews