Early Life and Education
Howard Stanley Marks was born in 1946 in Queens, New York. He graduated cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1967 with a degree in finance and a minor in Japanese Studies. He later earned an MBA in accounting and marketing from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1969, where he won the George Hay Brown Prize.
Rise to Success
Marks's career began at Citibank, where he worked as a research analyst before moving into high-yield debt and convertible securities. In 1985, he joined The TCW Group, where he led the groups responsible for investments in distressed debt, high-yield bonds, and convertible securities. In 1995, Marks co-founded Oaktree Capital Management with Bruce Karsh and others. Oaktree quickly became a leader in distressed securities investments.
Key Business Strategies
Marks is known for his investment philosophy emphasizing risk management and understanding market cycles. He is a proponent of value investing, focusing on contrarian strategies. His investment memos, widely read by investors and analysts, detail his strategies and insights into the economy.
Philanthropy
Howard Marks has supported education through philanthropy, creating scholarships and endowing writing centers. In 1992, Marks created the Howard S. Marks Terms Scholarship to provide renewable scholarships to undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2009 he endowed the Marks Family Writing Center at the university. In March 2023, Nancy and Howard Marks made a $5 million gift to University of California, Los Angeles to endow a faculty chair held by the Vice Chair of Women's Health Research in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
