Cutting My Own Path

Known internationally as The Dean Of Risk Arbitrage, Guy Wyser-Pratte is a force majeure of shareholder activism.Born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and an Austrian-Catholic mother, Guy (Ghee) has lived a life shaped by history, ambition, and risk. From an idyllic childhood on the beaches of Cannes to narrowly escaping war-torn Europe, his journey is one of resilience, fortune, and survival against all odds. His background as a US Marine Corps infantry officer foreshadows his ability to lead into a storm. At just five years old, Guy was moments from death while attempting to crawl to freedom through a hole in a fence to Switzerland from Occupied Annecy, France. That near-death experience at the business end of a Nazi soldier's rifle, forever imprinted on his memory-becomming a defining moment of his life: a lesson in the fragility of fate, the necessity of taking risks when the stakes are highest, and the courage to cut your own path."Every time I uncovered corporate misbehavior at the expense of shareholders, I felt an immediate surge of purpose. I wasn't built to sit quietly and passively sweat out individual risk-arbitrage deals. That just wasn't me. By the 1990s, I was actively going after managements in the United States that were failing their shareholders."-Guy Wyser Pratte"There are men who follow the rules, and there are men who rewrite them. Guy Wyser-Pratte has never been interested in the former."-Brig. Gen. Thomas V. DraudeGuy P. Wyser-Pratte, MBA is considered by many to be the founding father of shareholder activism. He is a U.S. Marine Corps Officer, an award-winning and celebrated arbatrageur, a fund manager with 38% returns, and sports a storied history of iconic, disruptive mischief in the name of shareholder value.