Leon Cooperman

Leon G. Cooperman (born April 25, 1943) is an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager.

He is the chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors, a New York-based investment advisory firm managing over $3.3 billion in assets under management, the majority consisting of his personal wealth.

After graduating, he became a quality control engineer at Xerox in 1965.

Cooperman later received his MBA from Columbia Business School, graduating in 1967.

He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Directly after graduating from Columbia, Cooperman joined Goldman Sachs.

He spent his first 22 years at Goldman in the Investment Research Department as partner-in-charge, co-chairman of the Investment Policy Committee and chairman of the Stock Selection Committee.

Since the late 1970s, Cooperman has been a resident of the Short Hills neighborhood of Millburn, New Jersey, but he spends the majority of his time in Boca Raton, Florida.

He has an honorary doctorate in finance from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.

In 1989, he became chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and was chief investment officer of the equity product line including managing the GS Capital Growth Fund, an open-end mutual fund, for one and one-half years.

While at Goldman Sachs, for nine consecutive years, Cooperman was voted the number one portfolio strategist in the Institutional Investor "All-America Research Team" survey.

At the end of 1991 after twenty-five years of service, Cooperman retired from his positions as a general partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and as chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

After leaving Goldman Sachs, he organized a private investment partnership, Omega Advisors, Inc.

In November 2011, Cooperman gained attention for an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama in which among other things charged the president with engaging in class warfare.

In 2012, Cooperman was included in the 50 Most Influential list of Bloomberg Markets magazine.

Forbes listed Cooperman as one of the 40 Highest-Earning hedge fund managers in 2013.

In the following year, the publication listed him among the top 25.

In recent years, Cooperman has primarily donated to Republican political campaigns.

In September 2016 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Cooperman and Omega Advisors with insider trading, more specifically for "trading stocks, bonds and call options of Atlas Pipeline Partners in July 2010 on information he obtained from an executive at the company."

Cooperman retired in 2016 and converted Omega to a family office.

On September 21, 2016, Cooperman was charged with insider trading by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

He denied the charges.

Cooperman faced criminal charges in a related parallel proceeding and has asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before a SEC hearing.

Cooperman's firm agreed to a $4.9 million settlement with the SEC in May 2017 but admitted no wrong-doing.

As part of the settlement, Cooperman and Omega agreed to be subject to a compliance monitor with access to their electronic communications and trading records and to submit monthly certifications that they had not engaged in insider trading until 2022.

Cooperman was born to a Jewish family in the South Bronx, New York City.

He is the son of immigrants from Poland.

Cooperman was the first in his family to earn a college degree.

As an undergraduate at Hunter College, Cooperman joined and was an active member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi.

In May 2017 Cooperman's firm agreed to a $4.9 million settlement with the SEC. As part of the agreement, Omega Advisers admitted no wrongdoing.

As part of the settlement, Cooperman and Omega agreed to ongoing compliance monitoring until 2022.

The monitoring includes being subject to an onsite compliance monitor with access to their electronic communications and trading records.

In addition, Cooperman and Omega must submit monthly certifications that they were not aware of material nonpublic information prior to any securities trades.

Following the settlement, Cooperman commented: "The process in my opinion was totally abusive. It's a problem that the government should address," and "My lawyers told me that the probability of my winning would be overwhelmingly high, that if I didn't win it had nothing to do with the merits of the case," he said.

SEC officials declined to comment.

With his wife Toby, he has two sons, Wayne and Michael, and three grandchildren.

In 2019, he criticized Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's proposal to implement a wealth tax.

He said it would lead to "unnatural acts, be near impossible to police, and is probably unconstitutional."

He said that the stock market would drop by 25% if Warren was elected.

In an interview on CNBC, Cooperman criticized the potential Warren wealth tax and its implications on his billion dollar fortune.