Jim Chanos

President and Founder, Kynikos Associates

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 domestic and offshore clients. 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 short-sold 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 dubbed by Barron’s as “the market call of the decade, if not the past fifty years.” The media has noted Mr. Chanos’ prescience in alerting finance ministers and others about the global financial crisis well before it occurred. His views on the lessons from the crisis, capital markets regulation, and investment strategies, among other topics, are regularly covered by news organizations worldwide.

Mr. Chanos is Chairman of the Coalition of Private Investment Companies, whose members are diverse in their size and investment strategies. The members’ clients include pension funds, asset managers, foundations, other institutional investors, and qualified wealthy individuals. In that role, Mr. Chanos has testified before Congress and provided comments to regulations proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Services Authority in theUnited Kingdom.

At the Yale University School of Management, Mr. Chanos is a Visiting Lecturer in Finance, teaching a class on the history of financial fraud.