Kyle Bass

J. Kyle Bass is an American investor and founder of Conservation Equity Management, a Texas-based private equity firm focused on environmental sustainability. He is also the founder and principal of Hayman Capital Management, L.P., a Dallas-based hedge fund focused on global events.

In 2008, Bass successfully predicted and effectively bet against the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis by purchasing credit default swaps on subprime securities, which, in turn, increased in value when the real estate bubble burst.

As a manager of the Coalition for Affordable Drugs (CFAD), Bass challenged the validity of 28 pharmaceutical corporations' patents via inter partes review, claiming that he wanted to invalidate weak patents imposing costs on consumers, thus making drugs covered by those patents more affordable. The drug companies targeted by Bass allege that the sole purpose of the validity challenges was to allow Bass to short the market, thereby profiting from the change in companies' stock prices. However, at least one event study indicates that if Bass had in fact pursued such a strategy, he could not have profited, because his "petitions for ''inter partes'' review ... did not consistently produce statistically significant negative returns in the patent holders' share prices." The drug patent challenge campaign fizzled after several legal setbacks.

Bass was the recipient of the 2019 Foreign Policy Association Medal for his responsible internationalism. Bass is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger (China).

He is on the advisory board of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, executive advisory board of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, and the investment advisory board member to NewEdge Wealth.

Bass is also a boardmember of the Texas Department of Public Safety Foundation, the Texas Wildlife Association Foundation (TWAF), and The Quad Fund.

On June 14, 2020, the ''Wall Street Journal'' reported that Bass is facing regulatory scrutiny from SEC investigators for potential market manipulation—an issue that appears to stem from a controversial trade, executed in late-2015, in which Bass' fund built a short position against the stock price of a publicly traded REIT, United Development Funding (UDF), then accused the REIT of being a Ponzi scheme. The REIT executives were convicted and sentenced to a combined 20 years in federal prison. Provided by Wikipedia