Ben Axler
Hedge Fund Manager in New York
Ben Axler is a hedge fund manager and founder of Spruce Point Capital Management. Mr. Axler is an activist short-seller, forensic financial researcher, and has exposed over $1.0 billion of alleged frauds on the Nasdaq and the NYSE.
Past Occupation
Prior to founding his company in 2009, Mr. Axler spent eight years as an investment banker with Credit Suisse and Barclays Capital where he structured and executed billions of dollars of financing, derivative risk management, and M&A deals for leading Fortune 500 clients.
Industry Accolades
Mr. Axler’s work has been widely recognized in the financial industry for its originality and track record of performance. TipRanks.com, a website dedicated to tracking the performance of investor recommendations, ranked Mr. Axler as one of the top 70 out of 4,800 analysts tracked as of February 2016.
In March 2016, Sumzer.com ranked Mr. Axler the top performing short-seller for idea performance among its 12,000 members, dating back to 2008
http://www.businessinsider.com/ten-best-short-sellers-on-sumzero-2016-3
In August 2014, ActivistShorts.com, a firm dedicated to tracking the investment recommendations of short sellers, concluded that Mr. Axler’s recommendations were among the top performing in the industry.
In January 2014, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) profiled Mr. Axler’s short research in a report entitled “How Constraining Are Limits to Arbitrage? Evidence from a Recent Financial Innovation,” and also concluded that Mr. Axler’s research ideas produced superior investment returns.
Mr. Axler is a frequent market commentator and has appeared on both the Reuters and Hedgeye television network. Mr Axler was also profiled in the book “The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work.”
Education
Mr. Axler graduated from Yale University with a Masters degree in Statistics, and received both a Bachelor of Arts degree in Statistics and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing and Business Administration from Rutgers College, where he graduated with Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors.