Guy Wyser-Pratte

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Guy P. Wyser-Pratte (born June 21, 1940 in Vichy ) is an American financial investor and corporate raider , President of Wyser-Pratte Management Co. Inc.

biography

Guy Wyser-Pratte was born as the son of a Hungarian and an Austrian in Vichy, where the parents had fled from the National Socialists (see also: Vichy regime ). His mother came from a family in Graz who emigrated to France after the First World War. His parents emigrated with their children to the USA in March 1947, where Guy Wyser-Pratte was naturalized in 1953 . He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Rochester in June 1962 and a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) in finance from New York University in June 1971 . From June 1962 to June 1966 he served actively as an officer in a reconnaissance battalion of the 3rd Marine Division of the United States Marine Corps off the coast of Indochina , where he rose to the rank of captain and also volunteered for the Vietnam War , but never enlisted the front was used.

The Wyser-Pratte & Co. company, which he now runs, was founded in 1929 by his father Eugene Wyser-Pratte as an international arbitrage trade in Paris . It was re-established on Wall Street in 1948 and merged in July 1967 with Bache & Company, in which Guy (from 1968) and his father had headed risk arbitrage. In January 1971 the company appointed him head of the arbitrage department, which he held until January 1991. There he had his first active participation operation in 1974 with the sugar refinery Great Western United (today as Western Sugar Cooperative a subsidiary of Tate & Lyle ). In February 1991 he re-established the family business Wyser-Pratte & Co.

Guy Wyser-Pratte is the author of two reference books on risk arbitrage published by the Salomon Brothers Center at New York University in 1971 and 1982, which are regarded as standard works.

In the 1970s, Guy Wyser-Pratte was one of the leading figures of the so-called Shareholder Activist Movement (shareholder activists ). He says that throughout his forty-year career, he has always followed their fundamental tenets of shareholder rights and the need for managers to be actively involved in the success and failure of their companies. In the past 15 years, Wyser-Pratte has conducted more than 70 equity investment operations worldwide, mostly in Europe. These include, for example, positions in France at Taittinger , Vivarte (formerly Groupe André), Strafor Facom , Maurel et Prom , and Valeo (joined in January 2007, left in March 2007), in Germany at Rheinmetall (started in early 2001, left in late 2001) , Mannesmann , Mobilcom , Babcock Borsig (went bankrupt during his engagement, resulting in a loss of more than 20 million euros), Vossloh (joined in 2006, left after around three months in October 2006), IWKA (today KUKA AG ; joined in October 2003; then he took care of massive restructuring and strategy changes, as well as the resignation of six board members and seven supervisory boards;), Balda (entry at the beginning of 2007, exit with high loss in March 2008), CeWe Color (entry in March 2007), TUI (entry in mid-October 2007) and Curanum , in Austria Austrian Airlines .

Guy Wyser-Pratte has served on the boards of Ingenico , Prosodie , Comsat , Prudential Bache Securities, Bache & Co. and Vivarte. He is President of the US Marine Corps University Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation . He is also a member of the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee, founded in 1933 on the initiative of Albert Einstein , and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations . In 2007 he received the Alternative Investment News' 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award .

Quotes

  • About managers who do not participate in the company's success through their own financial commitment: "Do you smell the napalm ?"
  • About the then Prime Minister of Lower Saxony and former Federal President Christian Wulff (CDU): " Communist "

literature

  • "Do you smell the napalm?" - Rambo Raider Guy Wyser-Pratte . In: Hans Sedlmaier: Firmenjäger: How raiders buy, smash, sell off companies . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2003, ISBN 9783593371832

General sources

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wyser-Pratte Honored For Lifetime Achievement ( Memento of October 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), alternative investment news, February 2, 2007
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Klesse: Portrait of Guy Wyser-Pratte: Wall Street Financial Rambo , WirtschaftsWoche , November 8, 2007
personal data
SURNAME Wyser-Pratte, Guy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wyser-Pratte, Guy P.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-French financial investor and corporate raider
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Vichy