Willem J. Humes

Willem J. "Hans" Humes is the President and CEO of Greylock Capital Management (Greylock Capital LLC), an emerging markets focused alternative asset management company. Greylock Capital is a US registered investment adviser. Mr. Humes has over 20 years of experience working in emerging markets and has led and participated in transactions in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Background & Education
Mr. Humes was born in 1964 in Bethesda, Maryland. Mr. Humes' parents were active in judicial sector reform in developing markets and, as a result, Mr. Humes spent a significant portion of his childhood in many of the emerging market countries in which he would later work and invest. These countries included Nigeria, Morocco, Chile, Mexico, Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium. He matriculated at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1987.
Early career
He began his career at Manufacturers Hanover in 1988, where he worked on a number of sovereign debt restructurings including transactions for the Republic of the Philippines and the Republic of Yugoslavia. Following this, he moved to the Spanish bank, Banco Santander, where he engineered several debt for debt and debt for equity swaps in Latin America. Chief among these was a debt for debt swap with the Diocese of Guayaquil, Ecuador. A fluent Spanish speaker, Mr. Humes worked closely with the Archbishop of Guayaquil to manage Diocesan funds throughout the 1990’s and executed over $100 million debt swaps on behalf of the Diocese. Chief among these was a $28 million initiative that was used to fund food programs for orphans in Ecuador, as well as programs to provide clean water for rural communities. From 1991 to 1994, he was a key member of the Lehman Brothers emerging markets debt trading team, co-developing the desk and managing over $500 million in investments. Mr. Humes joined Van Eck Global in 1995 and managed a global portfolio that included investments in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Mexico, Togo and Venezuela.
Greylock Capital Management LLC
After successfully managing the global emerging markets debt portfolio at Van Eck, a decision was made to create Greylock Capital Management LLC as a joint venture with Van Eck owners. As a sign of loyalty to his alma mater and a sign of his outdoor spirit, the company was named after Mount Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts whose base is near Williams College. The management team provides investment advice on debt or debt-related securities by relying on years of international restructuring experience and on the ground investment analysis to identify investment opportunities. Greylock Capital specializes in markets where liquidity may be limited in order to structure portfolios with lower correlations to traditional emerging market strategies. In all cases, Greylock Capital stresses intelligent value investing, prudent hedging and capital preservation.
Examples of Countries Where Greylock Capital has invested
Africa: Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia
Asia: China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, North Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and South Korea
Latin America: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru
Eastern Europe: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and the Ukraine
Industry Contributions
Mr. Humes is a member of the Principles Consultative Group, an entity of the Institute of International Finance created to ensure stable capital flows and fair debt restructuring in emerging markets. Mr. Humes also served as the Co-Chairperson of the Global Committee of Argentina Bondholders, a group which represented approximately $40 billion in holdings in the
Argentina sovereign debt restructuring,the largest restructuring of its kind in history.
Charitable and Nonprofit Work
Mr. Humes is the board of directors of several nonprofit corporations and is actively engaged in numerous charitable efforts. He is on the board of directors of the New York Theater Workshop, a group which produces and stages plays in New York. He is also on the investment committee of Synergos, a nonprofit institute dedicated to developing sustainable, locally-based solutions to global poverty.

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