Varkki Chacko is the Chief Investment Officer and the Managing Principal of Credit Capital Investments (CCI). CCI seeks investment opportunities across the capital structure with a focus on the publicly traded markets in the US and India.

He has extensive experience in the global credit markets. Prior to moving to the buy-side in 2003, he spent approximately 16 years, initially at Salomon Brothers and then at Goldman Sachs. While at Goldman Sachs, Varkki was a Managing Director serving in various roles including Co-Head of Global High Yield Research, Head of European and Asian Credit Research and Head of Global Credit Strategy. Varkki was a top-ranked analyst in the Institutional Investor All-America Fixed Income Research Team from 1994 to 1998 and again in 2000. The 2000 and 2002 Euro money Credit Research Polls named the teams led by Varkki as top-ranked in Credit Research and in High-Grade and High-Yield Credit Strategy respectively.

Varkki was significantly involved in proprietary credit trading activities both at Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers. Varkki’s work in the real time index area has been awarded U.S. and European patents and is the basis of one of the $36 billion Ishares $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond Fund ETF. His research work in the polymer science industry, upon completing his graduate studies in engineering, also resulted in eight industrial patents being awarded.

Varkki completed his M.B.A. in Finance from New York University in 1987, a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts in 1982, and a B.E. (Hons) and M.S. (Hons) in 1978 from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India. Varkki is an Advisory Board member of the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Clark Cheng, CFA, FRM, CAIA joined Merrimac at the end of 2014 and is the Chief Investment Officer. Merrimac is a large single family office with investments in hedge funds, private equity, real estate and mutual funds.

Prior to Merrimac, he was responsible for managing alternative investment research in the Americas for HSBC’s Alternative Investment Group which had $39B in hedge fund investments across both discretionary and advisory mandates. Before joining HSBC, Clark performed hedge fund research at Guggenheim Partners and Morgan Stanley between 2002 and 2005. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, he worked at Credit Suisse First Boston’s equity research department in 2001. Prior to that, he spent six years building and establishing West Coast Economics.

Clark holds the Chartered Financial Analyst, Financial Risk Manager and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst designations.

He holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Duke University and a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Business/Economics and Psychology from UCLA. He has also completed his coursework towards his Masters Degree in Psychology from California State University, Los Angeles.

Dr. Chuback is a Board Certified Cardiovascular Surgeon who has been collecting art, along with his wife Diane Chuback, PhD for nearly 15 years. John had the good fortune of being exposed to a surgical professor, early in his training, who was a serious collector of fine art and subsequently became an enthusiast himself. He and his wife later had a very special encounter with Roy and Ann Boyd at their gallery and home in Chicago, which further solidified the couple’s passion for visual art and collecting. After purchasing their first significant work in the course of that interaction, they have never stopped.

Dr. Chuback’s education in collecting contemporary art has been gratifying, perplexing, exciting, and unstructured. He now possesses a private collection from which he, his friends, and his family, derive tremendous satisfaction and pleasure. He hopes to share some of what he has learned along the way with anyone interested in getting involved in this extremely rewarding paradigm and lifestyle.

Chuck Clarvit, Clarvit Capital Family Office

Charles Clarvit is CEO of his family office Clarvit Capital as of June 2015 after retiring from Vinci Partners-US, an asset and wealth management firm headquartered in Brazil. He is a former managing director and co-head of BlackRock Alternative Advisors, the firm’s fund of funds platform. He held significant portfolio management responsibilities and oversaw marketing strategy and client service for the fund of funds business on the BAA platform.

Clarvit joined BlackRock in 2007 following the acquisition of the fund of funds business of Quellos Group, LLC. At Quellos, he served as a principal. He oversaw the Quellos Client Group and held significant portfolio management responsibilities.

From 1985 to 1998, he was a managing director with CIBC Oppenheimer & Co., responsible for alternative investment strategies and private equity advisory services for US pensions, endowments, offshore institutions and high net worth families. From 1978 to 1985, he was with IBM Corporation in a system engineer and marketing capacity.

Chuck serves on the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees and their Center for Financial Economics advisory board. He is an angel investor and board member of AgeneBio.

He earned a BA degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in Economics and Statistics from Johns Hopkins University in 1978.