James Chanos

Jim Chanos is the Founder and Managing Partner of Kynikos Associates. As the largest exclusive short selling investment firm, Kynikos provides investment management services for both domestic and offshore clients. Through investment funds, partnerships, corporations and managed accounts, both domestic and offshore, Kynikos Associates maintains private portfolios of securities for clients. The funds, Ursus Partners, as well as Ursus International for non-U.S. clients, attempt to profit from the unusually high alphas found on the short side of the U.S. equity market. Mr. Chanos opened Kynikos Associates in 1985 to implement investment strategies he had uncovered while beginning his Wall Street career as a financial analyst with Paine Webber, Gilford Securities and Deutsche Bank. Throughout his investment career, Mr. Chanos has identified and sold short the shares of numerous well-known corporate financial disasters; among them, Baldwin-United, Commodore International, Coleco, Integrated Resources, Boston Chicken, Sunbeam, Conseco and Tyco International. His celebrated short-sale of Enron shares was recently dubbed by Barron’s as “the market call of the decade, if not the past fifty years.” Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mr. Chanos currently lives in New York with his four children and is active in many charitable foundations and educational institutions. Mr. Chanos received his BA in economics and political science in 1980 from Yale University.