Ted White
Ted White – Managing Director
Ted White is co-founder and a Managing Director of Legion Partners Asset Management.
Prior to founding Legion Partners, he most recently served in various functions with Knight Vinke Asset Management, a European-based activist fund manager. Positions included Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, where he was responsible for finance, operations, legal, marketing and client service functions. He is a former Deputy Director of the Council of Institutional Investors (CII), where responsibilities included policy development and implementation. Previous to Knight Vinke, White was a Portfolio Manager, Director of Corporate Governance, for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (“CalPERS”), where he was responsible for all components of its Governance Program, including $3 billion in active management, policy development and implementation, proxy voting and focused engagement activities. Prior to CalPERS, White was an Investment Officer – Deputy State Treasurer at the California State Treasurer’s Office, where his duties included fixed income portfolio analysis and trading, among other responsibilities. He is a current member of the Council of Institutional Investors Corporate Governance Advisory Council. White served as Co-Chairman of the Executive Remuneration Committee of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) until December 2014 and is a former member of the Standing Advisory Group for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).
White earned an MBA from California State University in Sacramento with a concentration in finance. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.
Legion Partners is a deep-value oriented activist investor focused in the small/mid cap space in North America. It was seeded at the beginning of 2014 by CalSTRS with a $200MM commitment.
Legion Partners believes that shareholder engagement/activism can help to catalyze change and is critical for long term investment success. The firm tends to work behind the scenes so that ideally no one even knows that they are involved with a company, but they have and are willing to be publicly involved, take board seats, and run proxy contests when they believe it is in shareholders’ best long-term interests. In addition to the fund, they make co-investments (single stock funds) where they want to own a greater percentage of a target company.