Co-chairs Dina Geha and Piers Butler discuss the conference’s journey and reflect on three decades of giving back. 

In 1993, Ira Sohn, a young Wall Street professional, passed away from cancer. Following his passing, Ira’s manager, colleague, and friends on Wall Street wanted to do something meaningful to honor his memory. They came up with a simple but powerful idea: invite some of Wall Street’s leading investors to share their best investment ideas with an audience, sell tickets to attend, and donate the proceeds to paediatric cancer research.

That idea became the Sohn Investment Conference, first held in New York in 1995. What began as a gathering of friends and colleagues has grown into a global series of investment conferences, bringing together some of the world’s most respected investors to share their insights while raising funds to fight paediatric cancer.

With in excess of $150m in research funds raised, the Sohn Investment Conference is now a worldwide phenomenon, with events across Asia, Europe and the U.S. Reflecting on this journey, co-chairs Dina Geha and Piers Butler are immensely proud to have been part of this be organising the first Sohn conference held outside the US: of what they have helped create: “It’s important to give something back. The finance industry is filled with a lot of good people. We have been able to raise awareness of pediatric cancer and the importance of having funding for cancerresearch.”

The pair are speaking to Hedgeweek ahead of the 2026 London edition held at the Marriott Hotel in Grosvenor Square. Both are looking forward to the day of hearing new ideas from the investment community. The conference sees speakers deliver 12-minute pitches to a packed audience, with no prior information divulged on what they are set to discuss. Those speaking take this extremely seriously, rehearsing for weeks on end to hone and perfect their time on the stage. Butler explains that to deliver a coherent, engaging, and tangible speech in that time frame takes “serious practice”.

Last year’s lineup included pitches from renowned short seller Carson Block and activist investors James Palliser and Boaz Weinstein. Butler is eagerly awaiting the ideas this year’s lineup is going to pitch to the audience. He notes previous pitches which have resonated most with individual stories rather than broader, thematic discussions. “What we have found through trial and error is that people are more interested and excited by pitches that are related to an individual stock pitch.”

This year’s conference comes at an interesting time for markets, falling just two weeks after the US midterm elections. Markets will still be absorbing and interpreting the results, which is set against a backdrop of broader economic uncertainty, with geopolitics, oil prices, changing supply chains, and rising interest rates adding to a myriad of diverging forces. This dispersive picture creates opportunity on both the long and short side of the market, which Geha describes as the “essence of Sohn.” “All the pitches boil down to whether the stock is fundamentally either under- or overvalued. Speakers always come with a target price and an upside or a downside.”

This year’s event will also feature the first AI panel. Butler believes the trade is entering a changing moment, “where focus has shifted from growth in semiconductors and infrastructure capex to the return on investments and when the eventual payoff will materialise.” AI dominating headlines and becoming the central bearing on market decisions is a reflection of how the investment landscape has changed since Sohn first launched back in 2012. During its initial years, the speaker lineup was traditionally long/short equity managers, while now speakers are far more varied and deliver pitches on several different strategies, a reflection of the changing makeup of the asset management industry. “We’ve had to adapt in how we pick,” Geha notes. “But everything comes back to getting exceptional speakers on the stage, and access to people that they wouldn’t otherwise have, to hear higher conviction and very differentiated investment ideas.”

Creating an environment that allows people to interact with one another and hear from some of the brightest minds in finance is what Sohn strives to achieve. That human interaction was lost during Covid-19, when each conferenceswereas shelved, and the New York edition of the conference was done virtually - Sohn London 26 is set to be better than ever. “People really love the networking. People love the idea generation and love the connection, which I think is pretty powerful,” concludes Butler.