Guy Spier

Guy Spier studied economics at Oxford University and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. His early career was spent in investment banking and a small hedge fund, where he discovered through painful experience that his initial approach to investing was deeply flawed — focused on short-term gains, influenced by bad incentives, and lacking the principled framework he later developed. He paid $650,100 jointly with Mohnish Pabrai in a charity auction to have lunch with Warren Buffett in 2008 — the same auction where Pabrai's half was $650,100, for a combined $1.3 million. This experience, and his deepening study of Buffett and Charlie Munger's investment philosophy, transformed his approach. He relocated from New York to Zurich with his family in 2008, partly to remove himself from the daily noise of Wall Street and create a better environment for long-term thinking. He manages the Aquamarine Fund, a value-oriented investment fund. His memoir 'The Education of a Value Investor' (2014) describes this transformation honestly — including his mistakes and how he changed his environment and daily habits to become a better investor. The book is notable for its personal candour about psychological obstacles to good investing.