Guy Spier

Spier was born in 1966 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. When he was three months old his family moved to Tel Aviv, Israel where he attended kindergarten. In 1970 his family moved to Iran where he attended the British Embassy School in Tehran. In 1977 his family moved again to Richmond in the UK, and he attended the City of London Freemen's School, in Ashtead, Surrey as a weekly boarder. In 1984 he matriculated to study Law at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Hugh Collins and Mary Stokes among others. Two years later, in 1986, he switched to study PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics).[4] Among his tutors were Peter Sinclair for Economics – where he occasionally shared tutorials with David Cameron, who would go on to become Prime Minister. He also studied politics with Vernon Bogdanor.[4] Although he was thoroughly mediocre at Politics, he proved to be a capable economist and graduated with a First-class degree, having also been awarded the Georg Webb Medley Prize for his performance in Economics.

During his university summers, Spier also completed courses of study at Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg and at Harvard Summer School. He also interned with Creditanstalt in London.

In 1990 Spier was offered places both in the Joint Business and Economics PhD program and at the MBA Program at Harvard. He opted to do the MBA and in 1993 he completed his MBA. Contemporaries at HBS include Mark Pincus, Chris Hohn and Sherry Coutu.

From 1988 to 1990, Spier was an associate at Braxton Associates, the strategy consulting firm which was later sold to Deloitte Consulting. Based out of the London and Paris offices, Spier worked with colleagues David Pitt-Watson, Michael Liebreich and others in advising British and European companies on their strategy vis-a-vis the European Common market. He subsequently took up an internship at the Forward Studies Unit (Cellule de Prospective) at the European Commission in Brussels.

Spier writes in his book that although interviewed with white-shoe firms like Goldman Sachs and J. P. Morgan during his last year at Harvard Business School, he turned down that opportunity to work in those, more structured environments for the lesser-known D.H. Blair. There he was given the title of Vice President and he sought funding for new technology startups. Spier subsequently described this experience as "not dissimilar" to the movie Wolf of Wall Street.. It was a career decision that he quickly came to regret.[5]

Upon leaving investment banking Spier founded the Aquamarine Fund, an investment partnership inspired by, and styled after Warren Buffett's 1950s investment partnerships – which he continues to manage today and which had $250 million in AUM as of 31 December 2019.

He is also an occasional financial commentator in the media.[6]

Spier follows closely Warren Buffett's principles on Value Investing and capital allocation. However, he also admits that Value Investing has changed over time, as the popularity of style means that generally fewer opportunities become available to investors. Ideas that will work would still be around, but the successful value investor of today has to look further and sometimes think outside the box.[7]

In 2003, Spier became the target, along with David Einhorn, Bill Ackman, and Whitney Tilson, of investigations by Eliot Spitzer,[8] then the New York Attorney General, as well as by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding short sales of Farmer Mac, MBIA corp and Allied Capital. The melt down of these companies during the late-2000s financial crisis vindicated[9] their short thesis and was the subject of books by Ackman[10] and Einhorn.[11]

More recently, Spier has eschewed all forms of activism, stating, "“My goal as an investor is to compound money for my shareholders, not to pick unnecessary fights or conduct myself like an avenging moral crusader”[12][13]

Spier has regularly advocated for probity and modesty in the management of financial firms. In 2008 Spier published a paper along with Peter Sinclair and Tom Skinner on "Bonuses, Credit Rating Agencies and the Credit Crunch" which argued that part of the cause of the 2008 crisis was short-termism leading to the miscalculation of bonuses at Credit Rating and other financial firms.[14] He has also strongly advocated in favor of zero management fees when it comes to professional investment management.[15] He has advocated for Switzerland to become a centre of true investing excellence. Writing "while Switzerland’s biotech, health and technology clusters are extraordinarily well developed, Swiss private banking still has a long way to go".[16]

In 2014 Palgrave MacMillan published The Education of a Value Investor which narrates Spier's early career struggles in investment banking on Wall Street and his transformation into a Value investor. The book has sold more than 175,000 copies in English and has been translated into Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Polish, Hebrew and Vietnamese.

In 2016 Spier, along with Phil Town and Matthew P. Peterson successfully petitioned Judge Sontchi at the Delaware Court of Bankruptcy to form an official committee of equity holders of Horsehead Corporation – which had filed for bankruptcy earlier that year.[17]

In a youtube interview with Tilman Versch of ValueDACH, Spier likened the art of stock picking to "Drunks in Bars".[18] also referencing Dan Bilzerian

In 2020 Spier hosted a panel on "The Future of Intelligent Investing" with Niall Ferguson, Sandy Climan and Daniel Aegerter.

Spier hosts an annual investment conference in Klosters called "VALUEx". Attendees have included include: Joe Chapman and Richard Reese, the former CEO of Iron Mountain

Guy Spier speaking with Niall Ferguson during the World Economic Forum

Spier lives in Zurich with his wife Lory and three children – Eva, Isaac and Sarah. He is related to the Lazard, Speyer and Rothschild banking families through his great great grandmother, Johanna Lazard.[29] He is 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. He is a member of Entrepreneurs' Organization and of the Young Presidents' Organization.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Guy Spier.

• personal website
• email newsletter
• Aquamarine Fund website
• Blog
• Podcast with British journalist Christina Patterson
• The Intelligent Investing Podcast with Eric Schleien
• Authors at Google Talk