Jeremy Grantham is an investment banker who currently serves on the Board of Directors of a large asset management partnership called GMO, LLC. Grantham was born in Doncaster, U.K during the late 1930’s and attended the University of Sheffield to study Economics. Following this Grantham relocated to the United States and earned an M.B.A. at Harvard University in 1966 before continuing his lifelong career in financial management.
Prior to co-founding his own companies, Grantham first worked for Royal Dutch Shell as an economist, Keystone Custodian Funds as a portfolio manager and Cresap McCormick & Paget as a management consultant. Grantham then co-founded a company called Batterymarch Financial Management, and in 1977, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo, LLC i.e. GMO, LLC, a global financial management company that oversees tens of billions of dollars. Grantham is also a father and advocate of environmental management. He has donated millions of dollars in the name of environmental sustainability to the London School of Economics.
According to a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo in November 2001, Grantham held the belief that emerging markets still have some run in them and that limited resource commodities should increase in value over time. In regard to current conditions, Jeremy Grantham expressed concerns regarding the quantitative easing program undertaken by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank as having a bubble creating wealth effect that can have very negative consequences within the next few years. Still however, Grantham stated U.S. currency devaluation and competitiveness could also have an impact on markets.
Grantham is a widely sought after financier whose GMO LLC letters are keenly read and quoted by financial journalists of numerous publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. One such letter, published by GMO LLC in October 2010 was quoted entitled ‘Night of the Living Fed’ where Grantham criticized the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s approach to solving prevent shortfalls in economic growth. Grantham has been featured at speaking engagements held by the CFA Society of Chicago, and the Morningstar Investors Conference.
Grantham’s investment style seems prudent and well calculated for the medium and long term. Speculative investing is probably not Grantham’s cup of tea. The insight and analysis exhibited by Grantham’s commentary is guided by a combination of global demand, growth and quantitative modeling data coupled with a well-entrenched education and experience with capital investments. Jeremy Grantham is well known for his foresights regarding future market trends, in particular speculative bubbles. All these characteristics essentially make Grantham a priceless and undervalued investment guru.
Sources: (Date of record, November 11, 2010)
1. http://bit.ly/9GFm5a (University of Sheffield)
2. http://bit.ly/14cx5I (GMO LLC)
3. http://bit.ly/c4Wa5C (Seeking Alpha)
4. http://bit.ly/a8pQv4 (CNBC)
5. http://bit.ly/c0gItk (Bloomberg Businessweek)