Israel “Izzy” Englander (born 1948) is an American investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. In 1989, he founded his hedge fund,

Millennium Management Millennium Management is an investment management firm with a multistrategy hedge fund offering. It is one of the world's largest alternative asset management firms with over $50 billion assets under management. The firm operates in America, Eur ...

, with Ronald Shear. The fund was started with million, and as of 2019 had billion in assets under management.

Early life and education

Israel "Izzy" Englander was born in 1948 and was raised in a Polish-Jewish family in the Crown Heights neighborhood of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

.Institutional Investor: "Izzy Englander's Growth Strategy for Millennium" by Stephen Taub
May 20, 2009 He was raised in a religious home and attended

yeshiva A yeshiva (; he, ישיבה, , sitting; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are st ...

. His father's entire family was killed in

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. His Polish parents were deported to a Soviet labor camp after the war, where Englander's two older sisters were born. They then immigrated to the United States in 1947. Always interested in the stock market, Englander began trading stocks while in high school. During college, he interned at Oppenheimer & Co. (where his future brother-in-law, Jack Nash, would eventually become president and chairman) and at the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...

. In 1970, he graduated from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

with a B.S. in finance. His first full-time job was with the Wall Street firm Kaufmann, Alsberg & Co. He later enrolled in New York University's MBA program in the evenings but never completed the degree.

Investment career

Early business career

At Kaufmann Alsberg, Englander focused on trading convertible securities and options. When the

American Stock Exchange NYSE American, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), and more recently as NYSE MKT, is an American stock exchange situated in New York City. AMEX was previously a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was know ...

began to list options, he purchased a seat on the exchange. In 1977, he formed a floor brokerage house, I.A. Englander & Co. In 1985, Englander and his partner John Mulheren Jr., started an investment firm called Jamie Securities Co. with a $75 million investment from the Belzberg family of Canada. Mulheren had previously worked as a trader for

Ivan Boesky Ivan Frederick Boesky (born March 6, 1937) is a former American stock trader who became infamous for his prominent role in an insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States during the mid-1980s. He was charged and pled guilty to insi ...

. In February 1988, when Boesky was later convicted of insider trading, and agreed to testify against Mulheren in a plea deal to receive a lesser sentence, Mulheren was arrested for carrying a loaded rifle and convicted of orchestrating illegal stock trades for Boesky, but the ruling was later overturned. Although Englander was never implicated in the matter in any way whatsoever, Jamie Securities was dissolved in 1988 due to the negative publicity in the aftermath of Mulheren's situation.

Millennium Management

In 1989, Englander started Millennium Management with Ronald Shear - whom he knew from his time at the

- with $35 million in seed money (including $5 million from Englander himself and another $2 million from the Belzberg family). The firm got off to a rough start and Shear left in 1990. Since then, Englander has grown Millennium into a $39.2 billion (under management) enterprise by using investment strategies like statistical arbitrage (quantitative analysis); fundamental long-short pairing; merger arbitrage (taking advantage of price differentials between a buy-out target company's stock price and bid price) and

convertible arbitrage Convertible arbitrage is a market-neutral investment strategy often employed by hedge funds. It involves the simultaneous purchase of convertible securities and the short sale of the same issuer's common stock. The premise of the strategy is t ...

(taking advantage of price differentials between a company's stock price and convertible bond or

stock warrant In finance, a warrant is a Security (finance), security that entitles the holder to buy or sell stock, typically the stock of the issuing company, at a fixed price called the exercise price. Warrants and option (finance), options are similar in ...

price). At any given time, Millennium holds thousands of investment positions and makes over 2 million trades on an average day. At the end of 2019, Millennium had 2,900 employees in more than 12 offices in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Personal life

Englander is married to Caryl (née Schechter) Englander. They have three children. In 2014, he bought a duplex apartment at New York City's

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Av ...

for million, a record price for a Manhattan co-op. He also owns a house in Atlantic Beach, New York. In 2022, he acquired a $20m apartment in Paris, formerly owned by the Bettencourt family, founding family of

L'Oréal L'Oréal S.A. () is a French personal care company headquartered in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine with a registered office in Paris. It is the world's largest cosmetics company and has developed activities in the field concentrating on hair color, ...

Wealth and philanthropy

In 2006, the Englander Foundation, headed by Englander and his wife, donated $20 million to mostly Jewish organizations and schools. Englander serves on the board of

Weill Cornell Medical College The Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is Cornell University's biomedical research unit and medical school located in Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York. Weill Cornell Medicine is affiliated with N ...

and the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. In March 2019, he was named one of the highest-earning hedge fund managers and traders by ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

''.

References

External links

Opalesque.tv: Izzy Englander interview, part 2
retrieved March 23, 2013 {{DEFAULTSORT:Englander, Israel 1948 births American billionaires American derivatives traders American hedge fund managers American investors American money managers Philanthropists from New York (state) American stock traders Businesspeople from New York City Living people Jewish American philanthropists New York University Stern School of Business alumni 21st-century American Jews