William A. Muggia is President, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer at Westfield Capital Management Company, L.P. Mr. Muggia joined Westfield Capital Management in April 1994. In addition to his executive duties, he chairs the investment committee, serves as Market Strategist and contributes investment ideas primarily within the health care and energy sectors. In 2001, Mr. Muggia was promoted to President and Chief Investment Officer and now oversees all of Westfield’s U.S. equity and hedge fund strategies. In this role, Mr. Muggia and his team have grown the firm from $2 billion to $14 billion in assets under management. Prior to joining Westfield, Mr. Muggia worked in the Technology Investment Banking Group at Alex Brown & Sons, where his responsibilities included mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and spinoffs. Before that, he was a vice president at Kidder, Peabody & Company. Mr. Muggia graduated from Middlebury College and received an MBA from Harvard Business School. Mr. Muggia and his family are very active in community service, focusing their efforts on education for underprivileged youth. He was a member of the board of directors of City Year Boston, a nonprofit organization focused on education for inner-city children. Mr. Muggia is currently on the board of Squashbusters, a successful Urban Squash nonprofit.
In this 3,724 word exclusive interview with the Wall Street Transcript, William Muggia reveals the strategic decisions that have led to a successful portfolio management firm.
“The history of the firm — briefly — it was founded in 1989 by Mike Hazard as a high net worth shop. I joined in 1994 as an analyst and to grow an institutional small-cap business. The Founder sold it to Boston Private Bank in 1997. When the bank took TARP during the 2008 crisis, we were able to buy the firm back from the bank. In 2009, we returned ourselves to 100% employee ownership. The equity ownership is great to both attract and retain talent — that was a critical thing to do in my opinion.”
An example of the portfolio picks for Westfield is a cholesterol drug development company:
“Alex Denner was Carl Icahn’s biotech guy, and he left to form Sarissa Capital…We were involved with a company last year called ARIAD where he was an activist and got on the board. It was eventually sold to Takeda (OTCMKTS:TKPYY). We also owned Bioverativ, the Biogen (NASDAQ:BIIB) spinoff. He got involved as an activist there. That company was also acquired, and I believe Medicines Company is currently Sarissa’s largest holding. He is on the board and has refreshed the board with new talent that we feel will work in the best interest of shareholders.”
Get the full detail on this and all the other top picks from William Muggia of Westfield Capital in his 3,724 word interview in the Wall Street Transcript.
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