Karl N. Beinkampen
Executive Director
Morgan Stanley - Alternative Investment Partners

Karl is a portfolio manager for the Private Equity Fund of Funds group.  He joined Morgan Stanley in 1994 and has 18 years of relevant industry experience.  Prior to his current role, he was a coverage officer in the financial sponsor group of Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division where he executed a wide range of capital market transactions and managed client relationships for Morgan Stanley’s private equity fund clients.  Prior to joining the firm, he worked for Kidder, Peabody & Co. in mergers and acquisitions and with Scully Brothers & Foss. He received an A.B. cum laude in economics from Princeton University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  Karl holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

James Chanos
President and Founder
Kynikos Associates LP

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.

Bruce Richards
President & CEO
Marathon Asset Management

Speaker bio to come…

David Shapiro
Managing Partner
KPS Capital Partners, LP

David Shapiro is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of KPS Capital Partners, LP, and a member of its Investment Committee.  KPS Capital Partners, LP is the manager of KPS Special Situations Funds, a family of private equity funds with over $1.8 billion of committed capital focused on constructive investing in restructurings, turnarounds, bankruptcies and other special situations.  

Mr. Shapiro and the Co-Founders of KPS have successfully developed and executed a proprietary investment strategy that has resulted in the creation of vibrant and successful enterprises out of assets or companies that were close to shutdown or liquidation, suffering from a history of operating losses, operating in bankruptcy, or in default of obligations to creditors.

Mr. Shapiro currently serves on the Board of Directors of the following KPS portfolio companies:

Genesis Worldwide II, Inc., Director
Headquartered in Callery, Pennsylvania, Genesis Worldwide II, Inc. engineers and manufactures metal coil processing and roll coating and electrostatic oiling equipment through its Herr-Voss, Stamco and GenCoat business units. www.gen-world.com

Hephaestus Holdings, Inc. / Jernberg Industries, Inc., Director
Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Jernberg Industries, Inc. is one of North America’s leading manufacturers of highly engineered forged parts for various power-train and wheel-end applications in the automotive industry. www.jernberg.com

Blue Water Automotive Systems, Inc., Chairman
Based in Marysville, Michigan, Blue Water Automotive Systems, Inc. is a leading manufacturer and designer of highly engineered molded thermoplastic components and assemblies for sale to automotive original equipment manufacturers and automotive suppliers. www.bwasi.com

Cloyes Gear and Products, Inc., Director
Headquartered in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, Cloyes Gear and Products, Inc. ("Cloyes") is a leading supplier of timing systems and components for automotive engines. www.cloyes.com

Attends Healthcare Inc., Director
Headquartered in Greenville, North Carolina, Attends Healthcare, Inc. is a leading manufacturer and distributor of a complete line of adult incontinence products for the North American marketplace that are sold primarily under the Attends® brand name. www.attends.com  www.paperpak.com

Bristol Compressors International, Inc., Director
Headquartered in Bristol, Virginia, Bristol Compressors International, Inc. (“Bristol”) is a leading global manufacturer and designer of compression technology used in residential and commercial air conditioning and heat pump applications. www.bristolcompressors.com

Mr. Shapiro previously served on the board of directors of the following KPS portfolio companies that were successfully sold to a variety of U.S. and international strategic and financial buyers: Speedline Technologies, Inc. (Chairman), Blue Heron Paper Company (Chairman), Americast Technologies, Inc., Ashcroft Inc., New Flyer Industries, Ltd. and Wire Rope Corporation of America, Inc. (Chairman).

Previously, Mr. Shapiro was an investment banker with Drexel Burnham Lambert and Dean Witter Reynolds.

He received a B.A. in History from the University of Michigan with High Honors and an MBA with a Specialization in Finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Michael E. Tennenbaum
Senior Managing Partner
Tennenbaum Capital Partners, LLC

Michael Tennenbaum is our Senior Managing Partner. Before forming TCP, he served for 32 years in various capacities at Bear Stearns, including Vice Chairman, Investment Banking. His responsibilities at Bear Stearns included managing the firm’s Risk Arbitrage Department, Investment Research Department, Options Department, and its Los Angeles Corporate Finance Department.

Mr. Tennenbaum has served on the Boards of many public and private companies, including Bear Stearns Companies, Inc., Tosco Corporation, Jenny Craig, Inc., and Arden Group. He currently serves as Chairman of: Pemco Aviation Group, Inc.; WinCup, Inc.; and Anacomp, Inc.

Mr. Tennenbaum is Trustee Emeritus of the Georgia Tech Foundation and was Chairman of its Investment Committee; he is Founder of the Tennenbaum Institute for Enterprise Transformation at the Georgia Tech School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. He is a Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Chairman of its Investment Committee; he is a member of the Committee on University Resources (COUR) at Harvard University; he is a Director of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council; he is a Member of the UCLA School of Medicine Board of Visitors and Founder of the Tennenbaum Interdisciplinary Center at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA; he is also a member of the National Innovation Initiative Strategy Council. Mr. Tennenbaum was a member of the Harvard Business School Board of Associates; was a Commissioner on the Intercity High-Speed Rail Commission for California and Chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. He served as Chairman of the Special Financial Advisory Committee to the Mayor of Los Angeles.

A graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology with a degree in Industrial Engineering, Mr. Tennenbaum received an M.B.A. with honors from the Harvard Business School.

Steven Wayne
Managing Director
Oak Hill Advisors L.P.

Steven Wayne, Managing Director, has responsibility for Oak Hill Advisors’ investments in middle-market and sponsor originated transactions. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Wayne was a Managing Director of Berenson & Company, a boutique investment and merchant bank, where he also served as the firm’s Chief Financial Officer. At Berenson, Mr. Wayne was responsible for developing and advising on merger, acquisition, restructuring and financing transactions as well as evaluating and executing principal transactions. Prior to Berenson, he worked at a middle market private equity firm and he began his career in the Corporate Finance Department of Drexel Burnham Lambert. Mr. Wayne earned a B.S., magna cum laude, from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.