William C. Vrattos

William C. Vrattos

Senior Lecturer of Business Administration

Senior Lecturer of Business Administration

Finance
+1 (617) 496-0851
 
William C. Vrattos
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Contact Information
(617) 496-0851
Featured Work Publications

Bill Vrattos is a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School, where he teaches Investment Strategies, a course on public market investing in the elective curriculum. He also co-teaches Private Equity Projects and Ecosystems, where he mentors student groups on private equity investment presentations.

Bill is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of York Capital Management, a global alternative asset manager founded in 1991.  During his 20+ years at York, he has started and run equity and credit businesses in the US, Europe, and Asia.  Prior to joining York, Bill was a portfolio manager and analyst at Georgica Advisors, an alternative asset manager based in New York.  He began his career at Morgan Stanley in New York where he worked in the corporate finance, capital markets, and real estate divisions.

Bill has served as a director of both public and private companies in a variety of industries as well as on many ad hoc creditor committees of companies undergoing restructurings.  Current board assignments include NextDecade Corporation (Ticker: NEXT), an LNG export and carbon capture solutions company where Bill serves as lead independent director, Generate Advisors LLC, a multi-billion dollar CLO manager, Saddle Butte Partners III, a pipeline company in the Powder River Basin, and Catalio Structured Opportunities Fund, a biotech-focused venture credit fund.

Prior boards have included ABY (dry bulk shipping), Arch Bay (subprime mortgage special servicing), Chembulk (product tanker shipping), eKabel Hessen (German cable TV), Entropy (solar power development), FiberNet Telecom (fiberoptic networks; Ticker: FTGX), India 2020 Fund II Limited (Indian private equity), LSSi Data Corp. (consumer database), Nebraska Wind (wind power development), Robin Holdings (container shipping), Samson Energy (oil & gas), and Sparta Insurance (property & casualty insurance).  Ad hoc creditor committees have included Bestel (Mexican telecom), Capmark (non-bank lending), Edison Mission Energy (power generation), Flag Telecom (undersea cables), Iusacell (Mexican telecom), OI (Brazilian telecom), Samarco Mineracao (Brazilian iron mining), Texas Utilities (power generation, transmission, and distribution), and Washington Mutual Holdings (bank holding company).

Bill is a trustee and former chairman of the board of the Museum of the City of New York, a trustee of the Groton School, a former board president and honorary trustee of the Buckley School, and a former member of the Investment Committee of the Dartmouth College Endowment.  He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School.

 

Featured Work
York Capital and Enovix
In June 2020, Jeremy Blank prepared for a meeting with his fellow partners at York Capital to discuss an investment he had championed in Enovix, a company developing a state-of-the-art, silicon-based battery. Early-stage technology companies, like Enovix, were not typical investments for York, but Blank had convinced his partners to invest. However, the partnership wanted to be “one and done” without reinvesting in future rounds. By 2020, Enovix had made great progress but not as quickly as forecasted. The company had set out to raise more money and received a term sheet from a well-known publicly-traded company. Blank saw this as an exciting opportunity for Enovix, but he was disappointed to see that it would require York to invest more capital and forego a key protective feature. How should Blank approach this meeting with his partners, and what should he recommend?
Cases and Teaching Materials