Julien Balkany (born 29 January 1981, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) is a French businessman and an investor based in New York. He is the younger brother of French Member of Parliament, Patrick Balkany. He is the cofounder and managing partner of private investment company Nanes Balkany Partners. The press has sometimes referred to Julien Balkany “as the new John Paulson[1] because his fund was up almost 50% in 2009 and he was ranked #1 on the 2008 annual list of the “30 Under 30” world’s top traders and hedge fund managers[2].
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He is of Jewish Hungarian origin and his father Gyula Balkany was deported to Auschwitz before immigrating to France and founding Rety, a Paris-based fashion house. His older brother Patrick Balkany[3] is a French political figure of the Union for a Popular Movement (Presidential Majority), a member of the National Assembly of France for the Hauts-de-Seine department and Mayor of Levallois-Perret.
He was raised in Neuilly and attended schools at Sainte-Croix de Neuilly and then at Prepasup-Ipesup where he obtained his baccalaureate cum laude. He studied at the Institute of Political Studies in Strasburg and received in 2002 a certificate in Finance from UC Berkeley Extension. He started his career in the emerging markets group of Bear Stearns in New York, the defunct investment bank.
In 2008, Balkany co-founded Nanes Balkany Partners with Daryl Nanes. The firm is a NY-based activist hedge fund which primarily pursues active value investments in publicly traded oil and gas companies. He had substantial interests in Vaalco Energy[4] and Toreador Resources Corp. His strategy of attempting to take advantage of undervalued companies has contributed to his reputation of corporate raider[5].
He served as Non-executive Vice Chairman and Director of Toreador, an oil and gas exploration and production companies with operations in France and listed on the NASDAQ, from January 2009 to March 2011. He initiated changes in management and in the board of directors of Toreador in January 2009 [6], after deploring the company’s weak corporate governance practices, dismal operational performance and flawed strategic direction in order to rebuild value for the shareholders[7]. After the firm was highly criticized for its alleged role in the controversy on shale gas exploration in France and the subsequent ban of use of hydraulic fracking technologies, he resigned from the Board in March 20011, with immediate effect. He continued acting in the capacity of a special advisor to Toreador's President until August 2011 when he severed all his links with the company[8].
Concomitantly, Balkany has been a Managing Director at Nanes Delorme Capital Management LLC, a New York based financial advisory and broker-dealer firm, since 2005. He has executed several hundred million dollars worth of oil & gas M&A transactions. Clients included Lundin Petroleum, Maurel & Prom, PetroFalcon Corp, Heritage Oil Corp [9], Afren, Perenco.
He is also the Chairman of the Advisory Board of Stellar Energy, a London-based Investment Bank dedicated to the oil and gas industry.
Mr. Balkany was ranked #1 on the 2008 annual list of the “30 Under 30” world’s top traders and hedge fund managers published by the U.S. magazine Trader Monthly[10].
In June 2010 He also received an award as one of Institutional Investor’s Hedge Fund Rising Stars at the 8th Annual Hedge Fund Industry Awards[11].
On November 11, 2011, he announced that he will stand as candidate for the June 2012 French legislative elections in the First constituency for French residents overseas, including the United States and Canada(article JDD). As of December 31, 2011 there were 186,462 French citizens living in North America. The French parliamentary election will take place on Saturday June 2nd, and on Saturday June 16th, 2012. The MPs are elected for a five-year mandate by direct universal suffrage through a two-rounds system (to be elected a candidate must obtain at least 50% of the vote cast). This new constituency of the National Assembly was established by the constitutional amendment of July 23, 2008. Balkany’s candidacy is unaffiliated with a specific political party (French Morning News)but he endorses the political platform initiated and defined by President Sarkozy and his presidential majority with the support of several French political figures [12].