David Einhorn (hedge Fund Manager)

David Einhorn (hedge Fund Manager)

David Einhorn (born November 20, 1968), an American hedge fund manager, is the founder and president of Greenlight Capital, a "long-short value-oriented hedge fund". He started Greenlight Capital in 1996 with $900,000. Greenlight has generated about a 20% annualized return for investors. Einhorn is also the Chairman of Greenlight Capital Re, Ltd, a Cayman Islands-based reinsurance company and is a major shareholder.

Einhorn has received extensive coverage in the financial press for short selling Allied Capital, Lehman Brothers and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters stock. He is also a critic of current investment-banking practices, saying they are biased to maximize employee compensation. He cites a statistic that investment banks pay out 50 percent of revenues as compensation, and higher leverage means more revenues, making this model inherently risky.

Einhorn was a director at New Century Financial Corp., a major subprime mortgage lender, between March 2006 and March 2007. Greenlight Capital held 6.3% of the company's stock at the time he resigned from the board. A class action lawsuit was brought against 13 former directors and senior management of New Century. The lawsuit did not allege any specific wrongdoing by Einhorn and was settled in 2010 without any finding of liability on Einhorn's part. The settlement was funded by more than $90 million in payments from New Century's D&O carriers and personal payments by certain members of senior management.

He is also a founding Master Player of the Portfolios with Purpose virtual stock trading contest.