Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
For 28 years I ran the Aquamarine Fund which is was investment partnership closely modeled on the original Buffett Partnerships for a group of famIiles including my own. Over that period I delivered a 12x return - marginally beating the S&P and ending with $470 million in AUM. In 2024 I was diagnosed with a grade 4 glioblastoma and 2025 I had two recurrences when resulted in my returning the outside capital and converting to a family office. In 2014 I published a book titled, "The Education of a Value Investor" which has sold more than 50,000 copies in English and has been translated into German, Spanish, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Vietnamese amongst other languages. One of my best learning experiences to date was my $650,000 lunch with Warren Buffett, on which Mohnish Pabrai and I successfully bid and won in 2007. Investors and business leaders that I admire include my father, Seth Klarman, Joel Greenblatt, Li Lu, John Mihaljevic, Thomas Edison, Mahatma Gandhi, Edward Shackleton, Marcus Aurelius, Anthony Robbins, Don Keough, Charlie Munger. My Investment process includes the using checklists - as was written up in Atul Gawande's book, "The Checklist Manifesto". Education I did a MBA at Harvard Business School (class of 1993). I did my undergraduate degree at Brasenose College, Oxford in PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) where I did some tutorials with David Cameron. I graduated in 1988 with a First Class Degree and the George Webb Medley Prize for the top performance in Economics. I serve on the boards of UN Watch, and of Swiss Friends of Oxford University. I also serve on the advisory boards of Horasis and World Minds. In the past, I served on the Alumni Board of the Harvard Business School, the Dakshana Foundation and Weizmann Science and Business Club . I have been a TEDx co-Host in Tel Aviv and in Zurich with Maya Elhalal - Levavi, Peter Hogenkamp and Tim Duhrkoop and Hugo Schotman. I am a current, or have been a past investor in: Alaska Milk, American Express, Care Ratings, Moodys, Mastercard, Weetabix, India Energy Exchange, Raffles Education Corporation, Anhuaguera, Devry, Berkshire Hathaway, Markel Insurance amongst others. For more about me go to http://www.aquamarinefund.com or to http://www.guyspier.com #futureofintelligentinvesting
I started VALUEx in 2011 with the goal of creating a different kind of investment conference: one which did not cost an arm and a leg, while still delivering lasting value. I wanted to enable the participants (a group of thoughtful friends and investors) to meet in a supportive or “unplugged” environment without the interference and noise that comes with broker run affairs. The objective being shared ideas in pursuit of developing our investing knowledge and wisdom, and above-all, deep, life-long friendships.
World.Minds is a non-profit foundation set up in 2008 by Rolf Dobelli. The goal of the ZURICH.MINDS Foundation is "to create a bridge between the science, business and cultural communities". Its annual meeting has received some coverage in local media, such as the Switzerland edition of The Wall Street Journal, Swiss national television amongst others Members include Nobel prize laureate Kurt Wuthrich, Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, philosopher John N. Gray of the London School of Economics, director at the Max Planck Institute Gerd Gigerenzer, writer and politician Matt Ridley, historian Niall Ferguson, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, economist Paul Romer, neuroeconomist Ernst Fehr, and experimental psychologist Roy Baumeister.