Mr. Chou is the President of the Toronto-based Chou Associates Management Inc. Mr. Chou, a CFA, ended his formal education at Grade 12. While working as a technician for a phone company in 1981, he started an investment club that would later become the Associates fund. Mr. Chou has operated two of the country’s most successful funds, Chou Associates Fund and Chou RRSP fund, for the last 20 years. In 2005, the Canadian Investment Award named him the fund manager of the decade. His approach is to “find bargains and maintain discipline; if you can not find bargains stay in cash”.

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Mr. Avner Mandelman, BSc, MA, MBA, Giraffe Capital Corp., Toronto, Ontario (March 27, 2007)

Mr. Mandelman is the President and Chief Investment Officer of Giraffe Capital Corp. He has a BSc in Aeronautical Engineering from Israeli Technion University, an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and an MA in English from San Francisco State University. He started Giraffe in 1999 to invest in value tech stocks. Before that he ran the research departments at Gordon Capital, First Marathon and Brown, Baldwin and Nisker, a brokerage research boutique with six analysts under Avner all of whom ranked by Brandon Woods #1 in their field. Avner himself was ranked #1 in tech stocks. Over the last five years Giraffe Capital has been the only technology fund in North America to have earned a positive return for its clients. Avner writes extensively about investments in Canadian and US newspapers and magazines, including the Globe and Mail and Baron’s.

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Mr. Michael is the President of I. A. Michael Investment Council Ltd. He earned his bachelor of commerce degree from McGill University in 1971.  In 1973, he received an MBA from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1979 he earned his CFA designation. Upon graduation from Wharton, Irwin started his career at Hodgson, Roberton, Laing & Company in the capacity of fixed income portfolio manager and bond trader. He then moved on to Morgan Stanley Canada Limited and worked in the areas of fixed income research and institutional sales. Prior to forming his own investment council firm, Irwin was a partner at Beutel Goodman & Co, where he served as vice-president of fixed income investments and portfolio manager of Dynamic Income Fund. He has also served as a director of the Toronto Society of Financial Analysts and is a former vice president of the Toronto Futures Exchange. I. A. Michael Investment Council Ltd., established in 1985, is dedicated to managing the ABC Funds. By concentrating on securities that are deemed to be undervalued, ABC Funds’ portfolios are structured for superior long term returns with limited downside risk. Irwin is the single largest individual unit holder of ABC Funds. He does not trade for his own account and has confined his and his family’s investments to ABC Funds.

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Mr. Whitman is the Founder, Chairman and co-CIO of Third Avenue Management LLC. Mr. Whitman is a veteran value investor with a long, distinguished history as a control investor who has identified value securities for more than 50 years. He founded the predecessor to Third Avenue Funds in 1986 and M. J. Whitman LLC, a full service broker-dealer affiliated with Third Avenue, in 1974. He has managed the flagship Third Avenue Fund since its inception. Mr. Whitman has taught courses in value investing and distressed investing for the past thirty years at Yale University’s School of Management. He has also taught classes at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management, which is named in his honor. He is the author of the Aggressive Conservative Investors and Value Investing - A Balanced Approach. Mr. Whitman received a Masters degree in Economics from the New School for Social Research and graduated from Syracuse University magna cum laude. He is also a CFA Charterholder . Mr. Whitman has agreed to talk about three issues (1) What is Safe & Cheap Investing (2) Advantages of Safe & Cheap Investing, and (3) Problems with Safe & Cheap Investing.

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