Dan Zwirn

Daniel B. Zwirn (born July 6, 1971) is an American investment manager. He is co-founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Arena Investors, LP, a credit-oriented, New York-based alternative investment company.

Zwirn attended the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, where he earned a BS in economics (1993); the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Electrical Engineering, where he earned a bachelor of applied science in computer science (1993), and Harvard Business School, where he earned an MBA (1998).

Zwirn began his career with Lazard Frères (now called Lazard) in 1993 and then held positions successively with Madison Dearborn Partners and Davidson Kempner Capital Management before founding the Special Opportunities Group of MSD Capital, the private investment group for Michael Dell.

In 2001, Zwirn became managing director and head of the Special Opportunities Group at Highbridge Capital Management, and he formed a joint venture with Highbridge called Highbridge/Zwirn Capital Management to pursue special situations financing and asset-based lending with $500 million in seed capital from Highbridge. In 2004, Highbridge/Zwirn was spun out of Highbridge and renamed D.B. Zwirn & Co. with Zwirn as managing partner and chief investment officer. By 2007, with strong investment returns and Zwirn’s reputation as a creative and consistent investment manager, D.B. Zwirn & Co. had grown to more than $5 billion in assets under management.

In 2009, Zwirn founded Arena Investors LLC, and in 2015, along with the publicly-traded Canadian investment holding company Westaim Corporation, he co-founded New York-based Arena Investors LP, where he is CEO and chief investment officer. Arena Investors’ initial capitalization was approximately $185 million in 2015, and the firm had assets under management of $2.6 billion as of September 2021.

Daniel Zwirn is known as a credit-oriented “special situations” investor, meaning he has typically focused on making loans to borrowers who for a variety of reasons would be unable to borrow from more-traditional lenders. These investments are typically asset-related, often involving illiquid assets, of relatively short duration, relatively high in the capital structure (to reduce risk), and intended to be largely uncorrelated with the overall financial markets.

Zwirn calls himself a “careful contrarian” and focuses on the reduction of risk as a way to increase overall investment performance, and has said that while no single investment can have zero risk, “There are times when the probability of success is extremely high, on a position-by-position basis, and the way that I can collectively reduce that [risk] to zero is by having a lot of those bets simultaneously.” Zwirn has consistently warned about government overreach (in the US and elsewhere) in trying to control the economy and capital markets, citing a resulting misperception of lower risk by investors, a “massive asset and credit bubble,” and unsustainable pricing in investments such as CLOs (collateralized loan obligations), subprime auto loans, and commercial mortgages. He has been frequently interviewed by financial media such as Institutional Investor, Bloomberg Markets/Bloomberg TV, Pensions & Investments, Private Debt Investor, and S&P Global Market Intelligence, with interview topics including credit markets in the US and globally, economic and fiscal policy, and special situation investing.

Daniel Zwirn is associated with the ongoing debate over when investment companies should “self report” themselves to regulators, and under what circumstances. This is because in the mid 2000s, after Zwirn discovered that a financial officer at D.B. Zwirn & Co. had handled certain transfers among funds and operational expenses improperly, slightly reducing returns for some investors, Zwirn personally paid for internal investigations, reimbursed investors with interest, and voluntarily reported the issues to investors and to the SEC (though under no legal obligation to do so)—yet he and the firm then were subject to a government investigation that lasted for four years. D.B. Zwirn & Co. was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing, and Zwirn was absolved of personal blame, but the lengthy investigation prevented the firm from obtaining its regular audited financial statements in a timely manner, contributing to the firm deciding to wind-down the funds and sell its remaining assets.

Zwirn has called his decision to self-report the issues at D.B. Zwirn & Co. “the right thing to do,” and as competing firms negotiated with Zwirn’s firm, vying to take over its assets, Zwirn also reportedly “resisted deals that would result in investors paying higher fees.”

Zwirn’s decision to self-report, and the resulting troubles it caused him and the firm, are still well-known in the industry as a cautionary tale. The publication HFM Compliance featured the firm in an article on the pros and cons of self-reporting in September 2018.

Zwirn is a senior trustee of the Brookings Institution, a member of the Executive Board of the University of Pennsylvania Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, and a member of the Board of Overseers for the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously served on the Leadership Council of the Robin Hood Foundation, the Board of Trustees of Barnard College of Columbia University, and the Board of Trustees of the New York Public Theater.

He is a Brooklyn Nets basketball fan and was featured by the Barclays Center as its 10 millionth fan.