Jean Manuel Rozan

Biography

Jean-Manuel Rozan is a professional investor and financial markets generalist. As a writer of novels, essays, and articles, he has displayed a wide range of interests. He is also a passionate horseman that has accomplished significant performances for an amateur rider in high level international Show Jumping Events. In the course of his professional career, he has lived eleven years in New York, visiting most of the United States, he has travelled many times to most major European countries, but he has also visited Latvia, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia. He has also gone many times to China, Israel, Brasil. On one occasion or more, he has visited Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Uzbekistan, Mali, Senegal, Guinea-Conakry, South Africa, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Jordan.

Financial career

Born in Geneva, raised in Paris, Jean-Manuel Rozan holds a BA from Institut Superieur du Commerce de Paris and a License Sciences Economiques from Nanterre. After a training program in an American company, Tesoro Petroleum, he graduates with a MBA from the Wharton School in 1980. Aside from an entrepreneurial attempt at opening “La Coupole”in New York in 1982, copy of the Paris landmark restaurant, the next ten years are devoted to the financial markets, at Salomon Brothers first, then as an options market maker on the floors of the Amex and the Nyffe in 1983 and 1984.He is then hired to start the currency options market making desk at Banque Indosuez in New York in 1985. There he meets Nassim Taleb ( it is Nassim’s first trading position!) and together they develop a trading philosophy based on the observation that extremely unlikely events are far more likely than the price of out-of-the-money options indicates( they are too cheap). That will underpin Nassim’s theories in the various books he has written since. Together with Nassim , they run an options book that is profitable every week for the length of their eighteen months employment at Indosuez. It is built as a never-ending diagonal time spread, long out-of-the-money short dated options; and short back dated at-the-money options. The mispricing and volatility differences in these are such that the book can be gamma positive with nominal time decay only, a rather novel concept at the time.

In 1986, he becomes Head Trader for derivatives options at Shearson-Lehman New York’s prop desk; in 1987 he returns to France and trades derivatives for Batif-banque,BGP, and for George Soros.In 1989, he writes in English a book titled “ The pendulum always swings back “ where he describes the general level of incompetence, greed and unsound race for bonuses which prevail at the time in banks. In his view, this makes trading for these institutions unacceptable any longer; and he explains in detail «Pendulum “why he quits trading. The book is not published then, but he writes a French version of it, then as it is about to be published under the title “Le Fric “in 1999, he writes the last two chapters.

In 1989, he starts Quartz Gestion, which proposes to recruit managers and organize hedge funds around their know-how and to market them across Europe. He meets Pr Sandy Grossman at the moment when he is quitting his university career, he raises the first one million dollars to get him a track record among his friends in the commodities pits of Chicago, and he markets Quantitative Financial Strategies across Europe in 1990 and 1991. Unfortunately, in the meantime he has sold Quartz Gestion to Banque Dumenil-Leble which runs into trouble and stops the nascent hedge funds marketing activity, not understanding its potential.

Jean-Manuel Rozan decides then to take a break from finance and to travel around to look for investment opportunities. Between 1991 and 1995, he goes seven times to China, countless times to Israel, a few times to Russia. He closes a deal between Groupe Accor, a group of private investors, and Israel’s conglomerate CLAL to develop all the brands of Accor in Israel in 1994; right at the beginning of the so –called “Middle-east Peace Process”, which unravels with the” Intifada” uprisings later in the 90s, preventing that deal to develop. Launched in 1991, Quartz Investissements orients its clients to a series of successful investments starting in 1994 ; fruits of an original global macro philosophy that consists of betting on the right individuals in carefully selected business segments and geographical regions. On one hand, based on a long –standing friendship formed in the 80s with Glenn Dubin, Paul Tudor Jones (Tudor Investment Corp), and Louis Bacon he creates a diversified portfolio of hedge funds that assembles the best names in the industry. Initiated in 1994, the portfolio is entirely disposed off in December 2006.On the other hand, inspired by a grasp of global macroeconomic factors nurtured by his many trips, and by an adequate selection of the people he has met whom to bet on, he initiates several successful in various countries, Israel, France, Brasil, Russia during the period 1994 -2009. Since 2010, Jean –Manuel Rozan has turned to investments in the Internet space, in fashion, and in the entertainment industry. He continues to write and publish.”Le Fric” will be published anew in 2011 under its original title, “Perdre comme un homme”, and will go as well on line in its English version. His latest book, “Letter to Mia”, will be published on line soon. The passion for horses still holds him.

Publications