Gabriel Grego, a famous short-seller from Quintessential Capital Management, has claimed another victory for short-sellers around the world. This time around, it was a rather remarkable victory, as the problems with Penumbra have not been his standard fare. Instead of fraud, this time the problem was the company’s Jet7 catheter. The Food and Drug Administration has since recalled the device. However, this far from Grego’s first foray into fraud finding. In fact, he has made a long and profitable career of it.
Q3 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
Grego starts with intense financial analysis when it comes to finding fraud at companies, but he ends up doing quite a bit of legwork in his quest for probing scams.
- Police investigator
- Gabriel Grego’s background
- Time in Israel
- Catching the value investing bug
- First activist campaign
- No groundbreaking moments
- Akazoo, a “very clean and swift victory”.
- Trying out Akazoo
- The “crazy craziness” of Folli Follie
- Returning to Folli Follie on the short side
- The Folli Follie investigation
- Arrest at Folli Follie
- Grego’s philosophy
- A unique short-seller
- Sending flowers to a male dancer
Police investigator
He sees himself like a police investigator who is trying to find the culprit in a crime. Grego told ValueWalk in an interview that he looks for every possible legal and ethical way to find the information he needs, and it usually requires a lot of out of the box thinking. There is essential information out there and “you need to get off the chair and go get it” since all the information is out there if you look hard enough, he explains.
When I asked Gabriel about why he approaches short selling from such a different perspective than other short-sellers, he said it’s because he has a nontraditional background as a hedge fund manager. Most fund managers work toward their MBA, then get a job at a trading desk, and then finally take a job at another fund and learn various fund manager strategies. Grego has lived in many countries and had a very unique life for someone in the financial field.