Background
Spier, Guy Selmar was born on February 4, 1966 in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, Republic of South Africa. Son of Simon Gustav and Marylin Eda Spier.
Spier, Guy Selmar was born on February 4, 1966 in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, Republic of South Africa. Son of Simon Gustav and Marylin Eda Spier.
Bachelor with first class honors, Oxford University, England, 1988. Master of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1993. Master of Arts, Oxford University, 1998.
He is well known for bidding United States$650,100 with Mohnish Pabrai for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett in June 2007. 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 also an occasional financial commentator in the media.
From 2007 to 2009, Spier served on the Advisory Board of the Dakshana Foundation
In spring 2010, Spier with Peter Hogenkamp and Tim Dührkoop co-founded TEDxZurich.
In 2003, Spier became the target, along with David Einhorn, Bill Ackman, and Whitney Tilson, of investigations by Eliot Spitzer, then the New York Attorney General, as well as by the United States. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding short sales of Farmer Mac, Municipal Bond Insurance Association corporation and Allied Capital. The melt down of these companies during the late-2000s financial crisis vindicated their short thesis and was the subject of books by Ackman and Einhorn.
Spier was educated in England at City of London Freemen"s School. From 1988 - 1990, Spier worked with David Pitt-Watson at Braxton Associates, which later became Deloitte Consulting.
In 1991, he was an intern at the European Commission in Brussels.
He completed his Master of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, class of 1993 with Mark Pincus, Chris Hohn and Sherry Coutu. He holds a First Class degree in Group of the European People's Party (Christian-Democratic Group) (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) from Oxford University where he studied at Brasenose College. Spier is related to the Lazard banking family through his great great grandmother, Johanna Lazard.
He is also 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.
Spier underperformed South&P 500 for the last 10 and 5 years suffering big losses in 2015 and early in 2016 (-28,7%). Horsehead Holding (more than 10% of the fund) filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2016.
Spier blames Greywolf Capital hedgefund for trying to take advantage of shareholders by buying debt of Horsehead and forcing company in bankruptcy. Most of the positions in Spier"s fund are copied from Buffet"s Berkshire Hathaway portfolio (American Express, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, General Motors, Berkshire itself, etc).
But his fund underperformed Berkshire Hathaway stock since inception by big margin.
He is a member of the Harvard Business School Alumni Board and also serves on advisory boards of Value Conferences. And of Zurich Minds. He is a member of Entrepreneurs" Organization and of the Young Presidents Organization.