John C. Pernell, Jr.
President & Founder
Mr. Pernell is a veteran of investment consulting, manager selection and other financial service experience and is well known and respected by his peers in the hedge fund investment community. He graduated with a BS in Business Administration from Wake Forest University in 1975, and for the next six years gained a diversified grounding in the financial services of banking, insurance and real estate. This included experience as both a commercial loan officer
and branch manager for First Citizens Bank and Trust Company.
Moving into investments in 1983, Mr. Pernell joined EF Hutton in North Carolina and transferred to the firm’s New York City office where he served as an investment consultant in the manager selection division. From 1987 to 1990, Mr. Pernell founded and was the Managing Director of the Collective Trust Division of Furman Selz, Inc. in New York. There he was responsible for the manager selection, monitoring, administration and strategic investment policy of the Trust — a series of multi-manager, bank-trusteed ERISA funds Mr. Pernell formed Polaris Investment Partners in 1990 and relocated the company from New York City to Charleston, South Carolina in 1994. As of June 2018, FINRA granted application to Polaris Private Placements LLC as a limited purpose Broker Dealer of which Mr. Pernell is CEO and part owner.