Investment Management Academy
Mike Murphy is currently co-director of the Investment Management Academy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2002, he co-founded Discovery Group, a private fund management company. The firm’s flagship private partnership invested in small capitalization companies in anticipation of change-of-control transactions and consistently outperformed the market for over 15 years. Prior to Discovery Group, Mr. Murphy specialized in Mergers & Acquisitions at Piper Jaffray, PWC, and J.P. Morgan Chase. He earned an MBA from Chicago Booth and a BS in Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the summer he can be found in the Chicago area, cycling frequently, and in the winter skiing and guiding in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Richard Excell just retired as a Senior Portfolio Manager at Wolverine Asset Management in Chicago where he ran a global equity long/short hedge fund portfolio. In this role, he oversaw a portfolio that combined quantitative factor and discretionary macro analysis, with bottom-up fundamental analysis and derivatives trade implementation to create a concentrated long/short portfolio that aims to deliver high risk-adjusted returns for institutional investors. Before joining WAM, he was the CIO and a partner at Satori Investment Partners and a Portfolio Manager and Co-Head of the Fundamental Equity Market Neutral Fund. Earlier in his career, he built and managed foreign exchange, precious metals, and emerging market cash and derivatives trading businesses around the world while with Crédit Agricole Indosuez and has lived in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK. Excell holds a B.S. in Finance with a minor in Accounting and Japanese Studies from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. Outside of work, he is Director of the Western Golf Association/Evans Scholars.