Ken Griffin
Academy of Achievement
Today, Ken Griffin is the Chairman, President and CEO of Citadel Investment Group, the Chicago-based hedge fund that has grown into a global investment giant with offices in New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo, handling more than $20 billion in investment capital. A teenage computer whiz from Boca Raton, Florida, Griffin started his first investment fund in his Harvard dorm room, writing his own software to execute a novel arbitrage strategy for trading convertible bonds. A year after graduating, he founded Citadel, with $4.6 million in capital. The new firm grew explosively, nimbly riding the waves of a turbulent market. Time and again, Griffin has turned an adverse market to his advantage. When the bottom dropped out of energy trading with the collapse of Enron, he rushed in where others feared to tread, and Citadel is now a major player in the oil and gas markets. This year, he made a similar foray into the troubled home mortgage sector. Griffin employs a virtual army of scientist