Speaker: B.J. Willingham, Moncrief Willingham Energy Advisers. Topic: "Climate Wars and What You Need to Know about Global Warming"

Mr. Willingham has over 40 years of investment experience, over 35 of those years focused on energy and natural resources.  As such, he is responsible for the research that contributes to the firm’s top-down view.  

From a senior position in the Trust Institutional Group of Wachovia Bank, he moved to Houston in the mid 1970s and joined Funds Advisory, which later became Criterion Investment Management Company.  As a key Portfolio Manager and later as Chairman of the Investment Strategy Group, he helped to build Criterion Investment Management Company from a $400 million boutique to an independent investment counselor with over $11 billion in assets.  While at Criterion, he correctly identified the end of the last incoming energy supercycle and eliminated the sector (liquidated a $2 billion energy portfolio in late 1981).  

Subsequent to Criterion's sale to Transamerica Corporation in 1989, he was the Chief Investment Officer for the Transamerica mutual fund family and Portfolio Manager for the Transamerica Natural Resources Fund.  With his reputation, knowledge and daily participation in equity analysis and trading, he maintains relationships with management of many public and private energy companies.  In 1999 he co-founded a second company, Moncrief Willingham Energy Advisers, which manages a long-short energy equity hedge fund.  

Mr. Willingham holds a B.A. in Economics from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Finance.  

Mr. Willingham is a CFA charter holder, and is currently a member of the Houston Society of Financial Analysts, and the CFA Institute.  Mr. Willingham served as a member of the Board of Trustees of The Asheville School for twelve years, with responsibility for the endowment, and last serving as the board’s Chairman.  He also served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Episcopal High School in Houston.