Connor Olev Martin O'Brien (born 4 February 1961) is a British-Estonian alpine skier, businessman, and investor. He is president and chief executive officer of O'Shares Investments, a USA-based ETF adviser, as well as president, chief executive officer and chief investment officer of Stanton Asset Management, a Montreal-based investment-management company, which he founded in 2002. O'Brien had previously established a private-equity investment firm, Stanton Capital Corporation, in New York City. Before establishing his own businesses, he held positions at Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers.
O'Brien is a former alpine skier who represented the United Kingdom in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and Estonia in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer.
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Early life and education
O'Brien was born and raised in Montreal and holds British and Estonian citizenship, as well as Canadian. His father was born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and his mother immigrated to Canada from Estonia as a child in 1944. When Estonia gained its independence from the Soviet Union, O'Brien became an Estonian citizen by birthright.
O'Brien attended schools in Montreal and went on to Middlebury College in Vermont, where he received a BA degree in physics and economics and was a member of Middlebury's alpine ski team. He then earned an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Business career
O'Brien began his career as an associate at Lehman Brothers and then moved to Merrill Lynch, where he was a vice-president for mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
In 1995, he founded Stanton Capital Corporation, a private-equity investment firm. One of Stanton Capital's first ventures was in the privatization of the Peruvian state-owned steel company SiderPeru. Stanton acted as the financial partner of a team of private investors that included Acerco S.A., as industry partner, and Wiese Inversiones Financieras S.A., an affiliate of Banco Wiese, to acquire the Peruvian steel company SiderPeru. The consortium, named Sider Corp, acquired 96.46% of Siderperu in 1996. Siderperu's employees acquired the remaining 3.54% of Siderperu's share capital. Stanton sold its share to its consortium partners in January 2001.
Stanton ventured into shipping in 1997 when it assembled a team of investors to partner with the Norwegian shipping company Tschudi & Eitzen to acquire ESCO, an Estonian state-owned shipping company that was privatized through O'Brien's family links to Estonia. According to the business daily Aripaev, ESCO has in the last four years accumulated huge debt, and its main shareholders were suspected of siphoning capital out of the company. Stanton sold its interest to Tschudi & Eitzen in June 2001 in order to recoup some money after dismal showings in both MaritimeDirect and Millenium Seacarriers.
Stanton followed the ESCO investment by teaming with shipping-industry executive Vassilios M. (Bill) Livanos in 1998 to form Millenium Seacarriers, Inc., a United States-based dry-bulk shipping company that eventually owned and operated a fleet of up to 22 bulk carriers. Millenium Seacarriers faced difficulties when market conditions and charter rates for the dry-bulk shipping sector deteriorated in the early 2000s. By 2001, bondholder Wayland Investment filed suit against Millenium Seacarriers and O'Brien claiming they "enriched themselves at the expense of the bondholders and other investors and creditors" by charging high management fees and executing a number of irregular sale-and-purchase transactions. Millenium settled the suit 2002 and gave up 17 ships, all but one of its remaining fleet. It eventually filed for restructuring in a bankruptcy proceeding.
O'Brien and Livanos also launched MaritimeDirect.com, an internet-based maritime information and e-commerce site, in 1999. MaritimeDirect weakened as a result of downturns in the dry-bulk shipping industry, overly optimistic projections, and the decline in tech-sector financing. Under pressure from creditors, it ceased operations in 2001.
Sports career
O'Brien began skiing at an early age and has skied for four countries: Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Estonia. He was a member of the Middlebury College alpine ski team and skied for the United States while in college. Skiing under the British flag, he finished 33rd in the downhill at the Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games in 1984. Temporarily coming out of retirement and while working on Wall Street, he returned to the Olympic Games in 1994 to ski for his mother's native country, Estonia, which had recently gained independence from the Soviet Union.