Prior to Sky Gem, Mr. Mandel was the Founder and Senior Portfolio Manager of the Soundview Strategic Fund, LP. The fund provided asset backed loans to corporations to better protect employees, management and shareholders. Mr. Mandel led the investment team at Soundview and had final responsibility for all financial analysis, due diligence and loan administration. Mr. Mandel has led the industry in incorporating the financing of life insurance and tax-free retirement income plans for corporations and their top executives.
Mr. Mandel started his career as an institutional equity trader at Cantor Fitzgerald & Company where he focused on the insurance and financial services sector. Mr. Mandel later joined D.E. Shaw Securities, part of a large hedge fund complex. At D.E. Shaw, he led a group focused on principal risk basket trading of equity securities and helped develop proprietary solutions for trading highly illiquid equity securities.
Mr. Mandel was later hired by Samuel J. LeFrak, a real estate billionaire, to help manage his non-real estate assets in his family investment office. Mr. Mandel analyzed both private and public equity investments for Mr. LeFrak, his children and his grandchildren. Mr. Mandel left to found HM Fund Management, LLC. The firm offered a variety of investment solutions, like principal protected notes tied to a basket of hedge funds and tax-efficient warrants tied to the performance of low volatility asset managers. The firm migrated to life insurance lending transactions in 2005. HM eventually managed a loan portfolio collateralized by 3.2 billion dollars in life insurance benefits and a 2.6 billion-dollar portfolio of life insurance contracts.
In addition to the U.S.A. and Canada, Mr. Mandel has successfully worked with institutions in South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Switzerland, France, Germany and England. Mr. Mandel has introduced structured products, market neutral managed accounts, private equity and hedge fund investments for family offices and other institutional investors worldwide.
Mr. Mandel received a B.A. cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts with a concentration in Politics 1995. He went on to receive his Master’s Degree from Columbia University in New York. There, he studied corporate strategic communications with a focus on brand management strategy in the insurance and asset management industry.
In his free time, Mr. Mandel has sponsored and helped lead fact-finding trips to the Middle East and Russia for the American Foreign Policy Council based in Washington, D.C. (www.afpc.org).
Mr. Mandel is also a volunteer advisor to start-up companies for The Venture Mentoring Team (www.thevmt.org). He focuses on helping start-ups maximize valuation and shareholder confidence.
Mr. Mandel lectures frequently and consults regularly for managed service organizations, registered investment advisors, law firms, accounting firms and other insurance advisors.
