Mohnish Pabrai

Mohnish Pabrai is an Indian-American businessman, investor, and philanthropist.

Career

Pabrai worked with Tellabs between 1986–91, first in its high speed data networking group, and then in 1989, joined its international subsidiary, working in international marketing and sales.

In 1991 he started his IT consulting and systems integration company, TransTech, Inc. with about US$30,000 from his own 401K account and US$70,000 from credit card debt. He sold the company in 2000 to Kurt Salmon Associates for US$20 million. Today he is the managing partner of the Pabrai Investment Funds (a family of hedge funds inspired by Buffett Partnerships), which he founded in 1999.

Books

Pabrai has high regards for Warren Buffett and admits that his investment style is copied from Buffett and others. He has written a book on his investing style: The Dhandho Investor: The Low - Risk Value Method to High Returns. In June 2007 he made headlines by bidding US$650,100 with Guy Spier for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett.

Value investing

Value investing is an investment paradigm that derives from the ideas on investment that Ben Graham and David Dodd began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis. Although value investing has taken many forms since its inception, it generally involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. As examples, such securities may be stock in public companies that trade at discounts to book value or tangible book value, have high dividend yields, have low price-to-earning multiples or have low price-to-book ratios.

High-profile proponents of value investing, including Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett, have argued that the essence of value investing is buying stocks at less than their intrinsic value. The discount of the market price to the intrinsic value is what Benjamin Graham called the "margin of safety". The intrinsic value is the discounted value of all future distributions. However, the future distributions and the appropriate discount rate can only be assumptions. ( Graham never recommended using future numbers, only past ones). For the last 25 years, Warren Buffett has taken the value investing concept even further with a focus on "finding an outstanding company at a sensible price" rather than generic companies at a bargain price.

Guy Spier

Guy Spier is a Zurich-based investor and author of a book on investing entitled The Education of a Value Investor. He is well known for bidding US$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.

Spier manages the Aquamarine Fund, an investment partnership inspired by, and styled after Warren Buffett's 1950s investment partnerships. He is also an occasional financial commentator in the media.

Philanthropy

Spier serves as the chair and founder of the Weizmann Science and Business Club. He is a member of the Harvard Business School Alumni Board and also serves on advisory boards of Value Conferences; and of Zurich Minds.

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.

Farmer Mac, Allied Capital and Eliot Spitzer

Puerto Rico

Coordinates: 18°12′N 66°30′W / 18.2°N 66.5°W / 18.2; -66.5

Puerto Rico (English /ˌpɔːrtə ˈriːkoʊ/ or /ˌpwɛərtə ˈriːkoʊ/;Spanish: [ˈpweɾto ˈriko], locally also [ˈpwelto ˈχiko; ˈʀ̥iko]), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Spanish: Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, literally the "Free Associated State of Puerto Rico"), is a United States territory located in the northeastern Caribbean. Puerto Rico is an archipelago that includes the main island of Puerto Rico and a number of smaller islands. The capital and largest city is San Juan. The territory does not observe daylight saving time, and its official languages are Spanish, which is predominant, and English. The island's population is approximately 3.4 million.

Puerto Rico's rich history, tropical climate, diverse natural scenery, renowned traditional cuisine and attractive tax incentives make it a popular destination for visitors from around the world. Its location in the Caribbean, combined with centuries of colonization and subsequent migration, has made Puerto Rican culture a distinct melting pot of Amerindian, Spanish, African, and North American influences.