The Sohn Conference Foundation was founded in 2006 to raise money to support medical research, the development of research equipment, and programs to help children with cancer and other childhood illnesses. more than $85 million has been raised. The Sohn Conference was founded in 1995 in memory of Ira Sohn, a
Wall Street
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...
professional, who died of
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
at the age of 29. At that time the conference raised money for Tomorrow's Children's Fund. The foundation has 501(c)(3) non-profit status.
Conference history
Launched in 1995 as the Ira Sohn Research Conference, it is now called the Sohn Investment Conference. It was created after the premature death from cancer of Ira W. Sohn, by his friends and colleagues Douglas Hirsch, Lance Laifer and Daniel Nir, together with Sohn's mother Judith Sohn and brother Evan.
In May 2016, the foundation and
CNBC
CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...
announced a partnership to present the Sohn Investment Conferences in collaboration. The first conference presented as a partnership took place in New York City on May 4, 2016.
Key people
* Dan Nir – Co-Founder & President, Sohn Conference Foundation
* Doug Hirsch – Co-Founder & Chairman Emeritus, Sohn Conference Foundation
* Evan Sohn – Co-Founder, Vice President and Treasurer
* Graham Duncan – CEO & Chairman
Sohn Investment Conference
Each year the conference brings together about 3,000 investors and hedge fund managers who present their views and ideas about investing. According to the ''Wall Street Journal'', the Sohn Investment Conference “is the Superbowl of investing conferences.” The conference can be a showcase for some historic messages, the most prominent being when
David Einhorn predicted the failure of
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ( ) was an American global financial services firm founded in 1847. Before Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States (behind Gol ...
.
Next Wave Sohn was launched in May 2014. It showcases the next generation of hedge fund managers whose resumes and past performances predict that they will become Wall Street's future stars. Next Wave Sohn is held in the morning before the main conference event. It is in the same format and spirit as the main conference, but for emerging funds instead.
Past investment speakers
*
William Ackman
William Albert Ackman (born May 11, 1966) is an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager. He is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, a hedge fund management company. His investment approach makes him an activis ...
*
Stanley Druckenmiller
Stanley Freeman Druckenmiller (born June 14, 1953) is an American investor, hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is the former chairman and president of Duquesne Capital, which he founded in 1981. He closed the fund in August 2010.
*
David Einhorn
* Niall Ferguson
*
Jeffrey Gundlach
*
Carl Icahn
Carl Celian Icahn (; born February 16, 1936) is an American financier. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of Icahn Enterprises, a public company and diversified conglomerate holding company based in Sunny Isles Beach. Icahn takes l ...
*
Paul Tudor Jones
Paul Tudor Jones II (born September 28, 1954) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager, conservationist and philanthropist. In 1980, he founded his hedge fund, Tudor Investment Corporation, an asset management firm headquartered in Stamford, ...
*
Seth Klarman
Seth Andrew Klarman (born May 21, 1957) is an American billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and author. He is a proponent of value investing. He is the chief executive and portfolio manager of the Baupost Group, a Boston-based private inve ...
*
Howard Marks
Dennis Howard Marks (13 August 1945 – 10 April 2016) was a Welsh drug smuggler and author who achieved notoriety as an international cannabis smuggler through high-profile court cases. At his peak he claimed to have been smuggling consignmen ...
*
Larry Robbins
*
Paul Singer
*
David Tepper
David Alan Tepper (born September 11, 1957) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager. He is the owner of the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) and Charlotte FC in Major League Soccer (MLS). Tepper is the founder and p ...
*
Sam Zell
Samuel Zell (born Shmuel Zielonka, September 28, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. A former lawyer, Zell is the founder and chairman of Equity Group Investments, a private investment firm, founded in 1968. He has ...
Past Honorees
*
Trevor Reilly
Trevor McKay Reilly (born January 17, 1988) is a former American football outside linebacker. He was selected by the New York Jets in the seventh round of the 2014 NFL Draft. He played college football at Utah.
College career
During his tenure, ...
*
Magnus Carlsen
Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster who is the reigning five-time World Chess Champion. He is also a three-time World Rapid Chess Champion and five-time World Blitz Chess Champion. Carlsen has h ...
*
Eli Manning
Elisha Nelson Manning (born January 3, 1981) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 16 seasons with the New York Giants. A member of the Manning football dynasty, he is the youngest son o ...
*
Marc Messier
Marc Messier, M.S.C. (born August 16, 1947) is a Canadian actor and filmmaker.
Background
Born in Granby, Quebec, Messier's 45-year acting career included the participation in several well-known films and television series.
After finishing his ...
*
Pat LaFontaine
Patrick Michael LaFontaine (born February 22, 1965) is an American former ice hockey center who played in the National Hockey League (NHL) and spent his entire playing career with the league's New York State-based teams.
LaFontaine played for th ...
*
Oz Pearlman
Oz Pearlman (born July 19, 1982) is an American mentalist, magician, and athlete who lives and works in the United States. He performs as a mentalist under the name "Oz the Mentalist", and has successfully appeared on ''America's Got Talent'', w ...
* Elena Simon
* Cindy Campbell
* Sandy Simon
*
Marc Tessier Levigne
*
Ken Langone
Kenneth Gerard Langone Sr. KSG (born September 16, 1935) is an American billionaire businessman, investor, and philanthropist, best known for organizing financing for the founders of The Home Depot. He has been a major donor to the Republican Pa ...
Investment Idea Contest
Students and professional investors are invited each year to submit an investment idea with a 12-month time horizon ahead of the annual Sohn Investment Conference in New York. The contest is judged by five major fund managers such as Bill Ackman and David Einhorn. The winner is given the opportunity to present the idea at the conference during a ten-minute pitch. Past winners include:
2011: Sunjay Gorawara- Indiana University undergraduate student.
2012: Shantanu Agrawal- Pacific Investment Management Co vice president.
2016: Marc Grow- Columbia Business School student
2017: Dylan Adelman-
Wharton School of Business
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in ...
student
2018: Andrew Walker- Rangeley Capital Head of Research
Four finalists are awarded two tickets to the conference and access to the GLG network. Eight semi-finalists are also picked and given two tickets to the conference.
Sohn Scientific Conference
In March/April 2016 the foundation held its first international scientific conference in collaboration with the
New York Academy of Sciences
The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wit ...
to sponsor “Sohn Conference: Pediatric Cancer in a Post-Genomic World.”
Pediatric cancer research and care
The foundation takes an investor's approach to choosing strategies to fight pediatric cancer. Focused on the New York metropolitan area, the foundation encourages collaboration among the area's well-known research institutes. Among its goals are to support a new generation of cancer researchers; to support access to the most current technologies for treating cancer; and to improve the quality of life for children who are living with cancer.
Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance
In 2014, the
Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research was launched by the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance. The award is bequeathed yearly to the most promising young scientists in New York City's medical research institutions and universities.
Strategic partners
The foundation gives grants to the following institutions:
*
Columbia University Medical Center
NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center (NYP/CUIMC), also known as the Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), is an academic medical center and the largest campus of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. It includes C ...
*
Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation
The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation (Damon Runyon) is an American not-for-profit cancer research organization focused on "discovering the talent to discover the cure". The organization states that its goals are to: "identify the best an ...
* The New York Genome Center
* Hackensack University Medical Center
*
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK or MSKCC) is a cancer treatment and research institution in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital. MSKCC is one of 52 National Cancer Institute– ...
*
NYU Langone Medical Center
NYU Langone Health is an academic medical center located in New York City, New York, United States. The health system consists of NYU Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Long Island School of Medicine, both part of New York University (NYU), and m ...
*
New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center
*
Pershing Square Foundation
*
The Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...
* Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute
International expansion
The foundation has partnered and seeded conferences across the globe, including Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, London, New York City, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Monaco and Zurich.
References
{{Authority control
Business conferences
Health charities in the United States
Cancer organizations based in the United States
Investment in the United States
Recurring events established in 1995
Financial District, Manhattan