Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer

Bank investing is a vocation. Policy is a passion.

Allen has invested in, analyzed and supervised banks and financial companies for more than 30 years. He founded Cybiont Capital in 2019 to codify that fundamental experience into a disciplined, rules-based approach to long/short investing in U.S. banks and fintechs.

From 2007 to 2018 Allen was a Partner at Paulson & Co. (and Co-Portfolio Manager from 2015), where he directed multibillion-dollar investment strategies in U.S. and international banks through the global financial crisis, including recapitalizations, distressed acquisitions and credit default swaps. His analysis led to more than $700 million of early equity short positions in financial companies that later went bankrupt, and his long positions in banks were the largest contributor to fund performance in 2009 and 2010. He also oversaw the disposition of a $50 billion notional bank credit default swap portfolio. He was the lead organizer for Paulson in the investor consortium that bought IndyMac Bank out of FDIC receivership in 2009 and renamed it OneWest Bank. The investment returned 3.2 times the $1.6 billion invested, with capital fully returned in the fifth year, before OneWest was sold to CIT in 2015. His work at Paulson also included purchasing deeply discounted Greek bank bonds that were later exchanged into equity at as little as 0.2 times tangible common equity.

Before Paulson, Allen led financial-sector coverage at CFRA, the subscription-based forensic accounting research firm, where he led early identification of subprime mortgage short opportunities. He began his career at the FDIC, where over 13 years he rose from commissioned bank examiner and capital markets specialist to Chief of Bank Analysis, leading work on bank-failure projection modeling, early bank stress testing, derivatives risk and risk-based deposit insurance pricing. He later served as SoFi’s Head of Community Bank Strategy during its bank charter application and public listing, was a strategic advisor to the community-bank fintech Neocova, and advises Atrium on product strategy and analysis.

Allen also brings a director’s perspective. He is an independent director of Flagstar Bank, N.A. (NYSE: FLG), where he chairs the Risk and Regulatory Remediation Committees, and he previously served on OneWest Bank’s board. He is a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Investor Advisory Committee and previously served on the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council.

Allen is a CFA charterholder and holds a B.A. in economics, with a certificate in finance, magna cum laude, from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

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