Ertan Enginalev
Aggressively Good
Ertan Enginalev is a German-born Turkish-American activist hedge fund manager who loves competition, innovation, and ambitious progress
Ertan is the founder and CEO of WSD Capital Management, a value-oriented investment firm that invests the capital of its principals, family offices, and institutional investors managing a combined $17 billion in assets by committing people, capital, and fortitude to help address the critical issues facing public companies.
Ertan is known for his unique position in the investment profession built on a distinctive process of developing outstanding assets into outstanding companies through benevolent hostility.
An outside advisor to CEOs and boards on matters relating to strategic redirection, improved operational execution and efficient capital allocation, Ertan specializes in the discovery and development of companies and special situations with a compelling catalyst to enhance shareholder value and drive growth. He is the first activist investor and global hedge fund manager in Turkey and one of Europe’s most influential and controversial shareholder activists. In its first year of operation, WSD Capital Management pioneered activist investing and shareholder activism in Turkey, which led its Turkey-based portfolio companies to generate more than $1 billion in shareholder value. Since the firm’s inception in 2014, WSD Capital Management’s portfolio companies have realized a cumulative equity value re-rating of more than $60 billion.
Committed to provoking ambitiously positive change, Ertan’s work focuses on driving continuous improvement and strengthening organizational change in today’s rapidly changing world by building a culture of high standards. His variant views and passion for challenging the status quo has gained him an audience among CEOs, board members and institutional investors.
Since founding WSD Capital Management, he has been invited to speak on panels alongside CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and to advise global institutional investors with more than $100 billion in assets under management.
“To me, life’s all about doing what’s right rather than what’s popular, because whenever you’re focused on living up to other people’s standards, you aren’t focusing on raising your own.”
Prior to forming WSD Capital Management, Ertan founded The Warschild Group, a San Francisco-based private investment firm. He began his career as an investment banker based in Istanbul and has more than 20 years of experience in the financial markets, with particular emphasis on mergers, acquisitions and special situation equities.
In 2009, Ertan established the Warschild Foundation to help in alleviating the world’s most pressing development challenges through public-private partnerships and by preserving and promoting civil society involvement.
He received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree and an MBA from the University of Miami’s School of Business.
His personal interests include fighting to strengthen accountability and aiding economic growth while advancing the principles of good governance, diversity, and competitiveness.
