Marc Kirst

Chairman & CEO

After more than 23 years at Merrill Lynch & Co. and Guggenheim Partners, Marc incorporated The Amazing Group, LLC, an investment banking and asset management company, in January 2015. The company has a relentless focus on delivering exceptional value and performance for clients, based on an uncompromising dedication to eight values: compassion, ethics, excellence, honesty, innovation, integrity, loyalty, respect and trust.

Marc is also the CEO of Amazing Asset Management, Inc., Amazing Genomics, Inc., Amazing Security Group, Inc. and Amazing Technology Inc..

Until late 2014, Marc was a Managing Director at Guggenheim Partners in New York, focusing on the expansion of the U.S. and international institutional business of the firm’s quantitative U.S. equity asset management arm, presenting mainly to institutional consultants, pension funds, insurance companies, asset management companies and banks.

Between March 2011 and November 2013, Marc built the international institutional business of Guggenheim’s main quantitative asset management arm from London, winning e.g. the first pension fund, creating the first German Spezialfonds, starting the first international license agreement with a major U.S. investment bank and opening the first separate management accounts, covering CIOs and due diligence analysts etc. While in London, Marc held the FCA UK licenses for “Investment Management” and “Financial Regulation.”

Marc joined Guggenheim Partners in Hong Kong in early 2010 to advance mainly the firm’s Asian business. He held the HK SFC licenses Type 4 (Advising on Securities), Type 5 (Advising on Futures Contracts) and Type 9 (Asset Management).

During his prior eighteen years with Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. in Frankfurt and Monte Carlo, Marc focused on asset management and worked closely with the firm’s New York and London real estate investment banking departments on mainly U.S. commercial real estate transactions, including many REIT IPOs and secondaries, the Zell/ML Real Estate Opportunities Partners partnerships, resulting in the Equity Office Properties Trust (EOP) IPO in 1996 and sale to Blackstone in 2007, mandates for Colony Capital, Deutsche Bank (sale of their Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas - acquired ultimately by Blackstone), Fontainebleau, MGM Resorts International, Morgans Hotel Group and Siemens among others.

In one of these transactions in 1995, Marc recommended investors to buy the Class-A office building “One Financial Square” (now „32 Old Slip“) in Manhattan when the prior owner defaulted on its mortgage and real estate values were still depressed. Goldman Sachs was one of the tenants. Marc and his investment banking colleague advised one interested group to increase their initial bid. They submitted the highest bid among 40 investors, offering USD 135 million. The group financed the acquisition with a USD 96 million loan and sold the office tower for USD 751 million at the peak of the real estate cycle in 2007. It was one of the largest sales on record of an office tower in Lower Manhattan and before the 2008/2009 recession. Marc also advised, e.g., the management and board of Monte Carlo-based and Paris-listed hotel and casino company Société des Bains de Mer Monaco (SBM) in regard to potential international hotel and casino acquisitions as well as hedging solutions for their strategic USD 300+ million Wynn Resorts, Ltd. (WYNN) equity stake.

During his time at Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., Marc was a regular member of the firm’s recognitions clubs “Society of Eagles”, “Chairman’s Club”, “Falcon’s” and consistently the No. 1 advisor for a considerable amount of time before he left the Monte Carlo and Frankfurt offices. He received the U.S. FINRA Series 7 license in 1990. Marc holds a Diplom-Betriebswirt (BA) degree and his studies were sponsored by Daimler-Benz AG when he was selected as one of 25 students s out of 2,700 applicants in 1987. He completed the mandatory German military service between 1986 and 1987.