Event Speakers

Go Back

Mr. Axler is the founder of Spruce Point Capital Management and co-founded Prescience Point Research Group (2012-2014), a short-focused research firm. Mr. Axler is an activist short-seller, forensic financial researcher, and has exposed over $1.0 billion of alleged frauds on the Nasdaq and the NYSE. Prior to founding his company in 2009, Mr. Axler spent eight years as an investment banker with Credit Suisse and Barclays Capital where he structured and executed billions of dollars of financing, derivative risk management, and M&A deals for leading Fortune 500 clients. Mr. Axler’s work has been widely recognized in the financial industry for its originality and track record of performance. In December 2016, Sentieo recognized Mr Axler’s @sprucepointcap as one of top top 15 most influential accounts in the topic of finance on Twitter. In March 2016, Business Insider and Sumzero named Mr. Axler the top idea generating short-seller in the world after an analysis of the performance of its 12,000 member short recommendations made since 2008. In August 2014, ActivistShorts.com, a firm dedicated to tracking the investment recommendations of short sellers, concluded that Mr. Axler’s recommendations were among the top performing in the industry. In January 2014, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) profiled Mr. Axler’s short research in a report entitled “How Constraining Are Limits to Arbitrage? Evidence from a Recent Financial Innovation,” and also concluded that Mr. Axler’s research ideas produced superior investment returns. Mr. Axler is a frequent market commentator and has appeared on CNBC and Bloomberg television, and in the print edition of Barron’s. Mr Axler was also profiled in the book “The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work.” Mr. Axler graduated from Yale University with a Masters degree in Statistics, and received both a Bachelor of Arts degree in Statistics and a Bachelor of Scie

Clark Cheng, CFA, FRM, joined Merrimac at the end of 2014 and is the Chief Investment Officer. Merrimac is a large single family office with investments in hedge funds, private equity, real estate and mutual funds. Prior to Merrimac, he was responsible for managing hedge fund research in the Americas for HSBC’s Alternative Investment Group which had $39B in hedge fund investments across both discretionary and advisory mandates. Before joining HSBC, Clark performed hedge fund research at Guggenheim Partners and Morgan Stanley between 2002 and 2005. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, he worked at Credit Suisse First Boston’s equity research department in 2001. Prior to that, he spent six years building and establishing West Coast Economics. Clark holds the Chartered Financial Analyst, Financial Risk Manager and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst designations. He holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Duke University and a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Business/Economics and Psychology from UCLA. He has also completed his coursework towards his Masters Degree in Psychology from California State University, Los Angeles.

Cory Lester joined Morgan Creek in January 2006. Mr. Lester's primary responsibilities include hedge fund manager sourcing and due diligence, portfolio management, and topical market research. Mr. Lester has worked from Morgan Creek's New York office since 2006 and was promoted to Managing Director, Public Investments in 2015. During his tenure at Morgan Creek, he has focused on a variety of geographies, asset classes, and investment strategies. Since 2012, Mr. Lester's primary focus has been Opportunistic Equity across Morgan Creek's various investment solutions and portfolios. He is the Co-Portfolio Manager of the Morgan Creek Opportunity Fund and Morgan Creek Global Equity Long/Short Institutional Fund with Mark Yusko. Prior to joining Morgan Creek, Mr. Lester was a Junior Analyst for Sands Point Capital Management in New York. He graduated from Davidson College in 2005 with his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics.

Prior to founding Totem Point, Mr. Nathani was a Senior Analyst at Axial Capital, a hedge fund seeded by Julian Robertson. At Axial, Mr. Nathani was responsible for stock selection, both long and short, across sectors. Prior to Axial, Mr. Nathani was a Partner at Venesprie Capital, a Tiger seeded hedge fund. Mr. Nathani joined Venesprie from Williamson McAree Investment Partners, a Tiger Cub where he was Managing Director. He began his career in Credit Suisse First Boston’s Technology Investment Banking Group in Palo Alto. Mr. Nathani graduated magna cum laude from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Columbia Business School beginning in 2009 where he taught in the Value Investing Program.

Fahmi Quadir is the founder and chief investment officer of Safkhet Capital, a concentrated, short-only fund focused on identifying “best ideas” through investigative research on companies potentially engaged in fraud. While it is focused on global equities, it invests opportunistically across the capital structure. Ms. Quadir was previously responsible for short selling at Krensavage Asset Management from May 2015 to April 2017. Krensavage is a $300 million healthcare equity long/short fund. When Ms. Quadir joined, the fund was nearly 100% net long. She created a concentrated, aggressive short book of fraudulent healthcare and biotechnology companies and employed forensic due diligence, earning her the nickname “The Assassin.” There she was also closely mentored by former Copper River managing partner, Marc Cohodes, who encouraged her to launch Safkhet. In 2012, Ms. Quadir graduated in mathematics and biology from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Her rigorous STEM background ensures she remains objective and empirical in her approach. Ms. Quadir was born and raised on Long Island. She lives in Manhattan with her standard poodle, Maera.

Mr. John Zito is a Partner and head of the firm’s Liquid Credit business. He is the Senior Portfolio Manager of multiple fund products, including the Credit Strategies Fund, Apollo Accord Fund, and certain Liquid Opportunistic Managed Accounts. He joined Apollo in 2012 after five years as a managing director and portfolio manager at Brencourt Advisors, a multi-strategy hedge fund, where he oversaw all of the firm’s credit investments including the Brencourt Credit Opportunities Fund. Prior to that, he was at Veritas Fund Group for five years where he co-managed the flagship capital structure focused high yield fund and the short only credit vehicle. He is a CFA charter holder and he graduated cum laude from Amherst College with an AB in Economics.