SINGAPORE: Former Workers’ Party Member of Parliament (WP MP) Leon Perera, who moved to New York in early 2025, shared in a LinkedIn post that he had attended a lecture held by American billionaire investor Howard Marks.
Mr Marks, the author of well-known and influential investment books, is the co-founder and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, one of the biggest distressed-debt investment firms in the world.
Mr Perera wrote in his post that Mr Marks has been characterised as “the second Warren Buffett” and added that Mr Buffett has noted how Mr Marks’ investment memos are “the first thing” he opens and reads when he sees them.
The former MP added that he did not just appreciate Mr Marks’ words of wisdom but also his delivery, which was, in contrast to most talks of this type, “pithy, punchy, and always framed with a Hemingway-esque economy of words.”
Due to confidentiality, what Mr Perera could share from the talk was limited, and he confined himself to Mr Marks’ more generic points that have already been published, adding his own input in parenthetical remarks and saying that even the first point is enough to blow readers away.
The first point he listed was: “The Opposite of Knowledge is not Ignorance. It is the Illusion of Knowledge. (We’ve all been in situations where the deluded argue their case with seemingly the greatest conviction).”
Another point the investor made that was shared by Mr Perera is, “Dare to be wrong. Success belongs to the idiosyncratic mavericks who walk among us. The rest can at best aspire to the market average. (economists often make poor investors because too many of us are two-handed….we like to say ‘on the one hand’ and then go on to say ‘on the other hand’!).”
He added that Mr Marks had also said, “What the wise man does at the beginning, the fool does at the end.”
Mr Perera thanked the renowned investor in particular for his wisdom, a quality he deems to be in short supply these days.
Interestingly, Mr Perera also met famed designer Vera Wang at the talk, and said he was looking forward to learning from her.
Mr Perera, an investment banker, wrote in January 2025 that he had taken on a new role in his company as the Executive Director at Yamada Consulting Group USA Inc., growing the firm’s stateside business and building connections between the US and Asia. He described this role as “pushing on an open door.”
Nevertheless, he remains Chairman of Yamada Consulting and Spire group in Asia, so he will travel between the US and Singapore. He jokingly wrote that this would dash “the hopes of any Singaporeans out there who would rather be rid of me permanently!” /TISG
Read also: Leon Perera: Are we Singaporeans more confident or more fearful about the future?
