David Einhorn

David M. Einhorn (born November 20, 1968) is an American investor, hedge fund manager, and amateur poker player.

He is the founder and president of Greenlight Capital, a "long-short value-oriented hedge fund".

In 1987, Einhorn graduated from Nicolet High School in Glendale, Wisconsin.

Einhorn graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a B.A. in government from the College of Arts and Sciences in 1991.

He was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at Cornell.

Born in New Jersey, Einhorn graduated from Cornell University, before starting Greenlight Capital in 1996.

Over the next decade, the fund experienced annualized returns of 26%, far better than the market.

Einhorn started Greenlight Capital in May 1996 with $900,000 in start up capital.

In May 2002, he gave a speech at the Sohn Investment Research Conference where he recommended shorting a mid-cap financial company called Allied Capital eventually disclosing that he himself had a substantial short position.

The day after the speech the company's stock went down by 20 percent.

Einhorn alleged the company of defrauding the Small Business Administration while Allied said that Einhorn was engaging in market manipulation, and illegally accessed his phone records using pretexting.

In June 2007, after a lengthy investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it found that Allied broke securities laws relating to the accounting and valuation of illiquid securities it held.

After the incident, Einhorn published a book, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time regarding this six-year fight.

Reviews of the book were generally positive; Seeking Alpha, said of the book: "the case against Allied Capital is laid out to the last detail. Because of the immense amount of data in the book, I would imagine that some readers may want to skip a page here and there. However, the book is by no means dull. This book proves that truth is really stranger than fiction."

Einhorn would come to view Allied as a microcosm of market trends: "What we've seen a year later is that Allied was the tip of an iceberg; that this kind of questionable ethic, philosophy and business practice was far more widespread than I recognized at the time ... Our country, our economy, is paying a huge price for that."

In July 2007, Einhorn shorted Lehman Brothers stock, believing that Lehman had massive exposures to illiquid real estate investments that were improperly accounted for.

He also claimed that they used dubious accounting practices in their financial filings.

Einhorn shared his thesis on Lehman in November 2007 at the Value Investing Congress.

When Bear Stearns had to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve in March 2008, Lehman was widely considered to be in a weak financial situation.

In a speech at a conference in April, Einhorn announced his Lehman short position.

In May, Lehman's CFO Erin Callan held a private teleconference with Einhorn and his staff, who hoped Callan could explain discrepancies they had uncovered since the firm's latest financial filing.

Einhorn publicly characterized Callan's responses on the call in a negative light and Lehman stock fell sharply.

Callan was fired a few weeks later when Lehman reported a $2.8 billion quarterly loss.

Lehman would declare bankruptcy in September 2008.

Prior to that date, the company's share price had increased more than tenfold since March 2009, the third-biggest gain in the Standard & Poor's Midcap 400 Index.

In his presentation Einhorn opined that the market for Green Mountain's new Keurig single-cup coffee brewer was "limited", and that the K-Cup coffee pods for the machine presented a "looming patent issue" for the company.

On May 26, 2011, Einhorn called for Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, to step down after Microsoft had been passed by both Google and Apple in market value.

Speaking at the Value Investing Congress in New York City on October 17, 2011, Einhorn publicly announced his short position in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters stock.

In January 2012, the U.K. Financial Services Authority (FSA) fined Einhorn and Greenlight Capital $11.2 million for trading on inside information.

The FSA claimed Einhorn obtained information on the Punch Taverns Plc (PUB) equity fundraising by a broker representing the company prior to public knowledge of the event.

Over the following four days, Einhorn sold more than 11 million shares, avoiding a 29.9% stock price collapse and subsequent loss of about £5.8 million.

The Financial Services Authority stated:"The FSA accepted that Einhorn's trading was not deliberate because he did not believe that it was inside information. However, this was not a reasonable belief. This was a serious case of market abuse by Einhorn and fell below the standards the FSA expects, particularly due to Einhorn's prominent position as President of Greenlight and given his experience in the market. Einhorn is an experienced professional with a high profile in the industry. We expect someone in his position to be able to identify inside information when he receives it and to act appropriately. His failure to do so is a serious breach of the expected standards of market conduct. It is highly damaging to market confidence when privileged shareholders commit market abuse, and the high penalty reflects the seriousness of his breach."Einhorn called the £7.2m fine "unjust" and "inconsistent with the law" but said he would pay it "rather than continue an arduous fight" The fine was the second largest levied on an individual in the history of Britain's Financial Services Authority.

Einhorn was included in Time magazine's Time 100 list of "100 most influential people in the world" in 2013.

Greenlight Capital's assets under management decreased from approximately US$12 billion in 2014 to about $5.5 billion as reported in July 2018 as the fund was down 11.3% from 2014 through the end of 2017, and a further 34% in 2018.

He has received extensive coverage in the financial press for his fund's performance, his investing strategy and his positions.

According to Investopedia, his net worth was around US$1.5 billion in June 2019.

Einhorn was born to a Jewish family in New Jersey, the son of Stephen and Nancy Einhorn.

Raised in Demarest, New Jersey, at seven he and his family moved to Wisconsin.

His father is the founder and president of Einhorn & Associates, a consulting firm, and Capital Midwest Fund, a venture capital fund.

He has one brother Daniel who works with his father.