Christopher M. Begg, CFA, is the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Investment Officer, and Co-Founder of East Coast Asset Management. Prior to co-founding East Coast, Chris served as a Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst at Moody Aldrich Partners and a Portfolio Manager at Boston Research and Management. Chris is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Heilbrunn Center of Graham and Dodd Investing at Columbia Business School, teaching Security Analysis during the fall Semester. Chris received his BS degree from the University of New Hampshire and holds a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation since 1998. Mr. Begg is a member of the Boston Security Analyst Society and the CFA Institute. Chris is involved in environmental conservation serving as a Corporate Trustee of the Trustees of Reservations and cofounder of Humans for Oceans (H40), a nonprofit organization created to support ocean conservation.

Aswath Damodaran is a professor of finance and David Margolis teaching fellow at the Stern School of Business at New York University. He teaches the corporate finance and equity valuation courses in the MBA program. He received his MBA and PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles. His research interests lie in valuation, portfolio management, and applied corporate finance. He has been published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. He has written three books on equity valuation (Damodaran on Valuation, Investment Valuation, and The Dark Side of Valuation) and two on corporate finance (Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice, Applied Corporate Finance: A User's Manual). He has coedited a book on investment management with Peter Bernstein (Investment Management) and has written a book on investment philosophies (Investment Philosophies). His newest book on portfolio management is titled Investment Fables and was published in 2004. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1984 to 1986, where he received the Earl Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award in 1985. He has been at NYU since 1986 and received the Stern School of Business Excellence in Teaching Award (awarded by the graduating class) in 1988, 1991, 1992, 1999, 2001, and 2007, and was the youngest winner of the University-wide Distinguished Teaching Award (in 1990). He was profiled in Business Week as one of the top 12 business school professors in the United States in 1994.

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Robert Hagstrom is Senior Portfolio Manager for Stifel Financial Corp's investment advisory subsidiary, EquityCompass Strategies. Mr. Hagstrom focuses on developing equity strategies that will invest globally combining EquityCompass' quantitative approach and his own qualitative approach to investing. Mr. Hagstrom has more than 28 years of investment experience, including 14 years as Portfolio Manager for Legg Mason Capital Management's Growth Equity Strategy.

Mr. Hagstrom was most recently Chief Investment Strategist of Legg Mason Investment Counsel. Previously, he was Senior Vice President and Portfolio Manager of the Growth Equity Strategy at Legg Mason Capital Management. Prior to that, he served as President and Chief Investment Officer of Legg Mason Focus Capital, General Partner of Focus Capital Advisory, and Principal at Lloyd, Leith and Sawin. Mr. Hagstrom acted as Portfolio Manager with First Fidelity Bank from 1989 to 1991. From 1984 to 1989, he was a Financial Advisor for Legg Mason Wood Walker, Inc.

Mr. Hagstrom is the author of nine investment books, including The New York Times Best Seller, "The Warren Buffett Way," (which has sold over 1.5 million copies and is now in its third edition), "The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy," "The Detective and the Investor: Uncovering the Investment Techniques from the Legendary Sleuths," and "Investing: The Last Liberal Art" (second edition). He earned his Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees from Villanova University and is a member of the CFA Institute and the CFA Society of Philadelphia.

Hendrik Leber, founded ACATIS in 1994 after having spent 5 years with McKinsey & Company and 5 years with private bank Metzler. Hendrik Leber received his university education in Saarbrücken, Germany, St. Gallen, Switzerland, Syracuse, NY and Berkeley, CA (on a Fulbright scholarship). He did his Ph.D. thesis in 1983 on Swiss banks in the US securities industry. Having read Warren Buffett's shareholder letters in the 1990s he converted from an efficient market believer into a value investor. ACATIS is a value investment boutique in Germany, offering mutual funds (equities, balanced, fixed income) based on a value approach to public and institutional investors with total assets under management now numbering 3.5 bn USD.

To quote German's eminent writer J.W.v.Goethe, Hendrik Leber is constantly seeking "what holds the world together at the core" using analytical tools from simple statistics to artificial intelligence.

At the Value Investor Conference some ten years ago, Hendrik Leber met photographer Michael O'Brien and commissioned him to take photographs of some of the world's leading investors and investment thinkers. William Green is the author of the accompanying investor profiles. The beautifully designed book "The Great Minds of Investing" will be first shown to the public at this conference.

Jeffrey Stafford, CFA, is director of equity research, North America, for Morningstar Research Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. Previously, he was Morningstar's sector director for energy and utilities equity research. He has also covered agriculture, chemical, mining, and healthcare companies at Morningstar. Before joining Morningstar in 2007, Stafford was a financial analyst for an asset-management firm. Stafford holds a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Notre Dame and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation.

Jon is a shareholder of Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb. He joined the firm in 1994, after spending three years at Farley Capital. From 1987 to 1990, Jon worked as a research analyst and writer at the Cuomo Commission on Trade and Competitiveness. He graduated magna cum laude from Stanford University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, in 1985.

Guy Spier is a Zurich-based investor and the author of The Education of a Value Investor. Since 1997, he has managed Aquamarine's privately offered investment funds.

Guy previously worked as an investment banker in New York and as a management consultant in London and Paris. He has an MBA from the Harvard Business School, class of 1993, and holds a First Class degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University. On graduating from Oxford, he was co-awarded the George Webb Medley prize for the best performance that year in economics.

Guy currently lives in Switzerland with his wife Lory and their three children, Eva, Isaac and Sarah.

Michel Bell is an investment advisor from Quebec, Canada. In 1987 Michel started his investment career witvalh Wood Gundy. He is a professional speaker, author, producer and former host a television series in Canada on investments. Over the past few decades, Michel has developed an investment philosophy as advocated by Warren Buffett. He is also an accomplished portrait artist.

Born in 1959, Michel Bell obtained a Bachelor's degree in physics from Laval University in 1981. He is the father of five children.