Jim Chanos is the founder and Managing Partner of Kynikos Associates LP. As the world’s largest exclusive short selling investment firm, Kynikos Associates LP provides investment management services for domestic and offshore clients. Through investment funds, partnerships, corporations, and managed accounts – domestic and offshore – Kynikos Associates LP maintains private portfolios of securities for clients. The Kynikos Capital Partners, Kynikos Global Capital Partners Ursus, Kriticos, and Kynikos Opportunity funds seek to profit from the unusually high alphas found on the long and short side of the U.S. and non-U.S. equity markets.
Mr. Chanos opened Kynikos Associates LP 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 dubbed by Barron’s as “the market call of the decade, if not the past fifty years.” The media has noted his prescience in alerting finance ministers and others about the global financial crisis well before it occurred. His views on financial market fraud, capital markets regulation and the Chinese financial system, among other topics, are regularly covered by news organizations worldwide.
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 the United Kingdom.
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mr. Chanos lives in New York City, and has four children. He is currently a Lecturer in Finance at the Yale School of Management teaching a class on the history of financial fraud. He currently serves as a Trustee at The New-York Historical Society and The National WWII Museum. Mr. Chanos received his BA in economics and political science in 1980 from Yale University.
