Thursday July 24, 2008
Biography 
Avner Mandelman was born in Israel and served in the Israeli Air Force, including the Six day War, and received a B.Sc in aeronautical Engineering before coming to Canada. After receiving an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Avner worked for Brascan in Toronto in mergers and acquisitions, and ran several research departments on Bay Street, including Gordon Capital, First Marathon, and Brown Baldwin Nisker, where he was ranked No 1. in Technology and all his analysts were ranked No. 1 as well, by Brendan Woods.
In 1999 Avner founded Giraffe Capital Corporation, a Toronto money management firm, to take advantage of the pending NASDAQ correction. Subsequently Giraffe was one of only Tech investment funds in North America to have made money through the tech bubble. Giraffe's specialty is "sleuth investing"-- physical due diligence of companies, which helped it outperform the market every year since its inception.
Avner also writs about stocks and investments, both in Canada and the US, including Barron's. Among his books is "The Sleuth Investor," recently published by McGraw Hill. Avner lives in Toronto, and enjoys playing frisbee with his children, as well as reading, writing, and sleuth-investing
