Laurence Penn

Laurence Penn is a Founding Partner, Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Ellington Management Group, the Old Greenwich, Connecticut-based alternative investment manager focused on securitized assets and credit ($22B AUM). He began his career at Lehman Brothers in 1984 and spent ~11 years there, running the structured transaction modeling group (1987-1990), co-creating the MBS/CMO modeling language 'BondTalk', and later serving as a Managing Director and co-head of CMO origination and trading. He joined Ellington in 1995 shortly after its founding and was an early senior portfolio manager for Agency RMBS. He is also CEO and President of Ellington Financial Inc. (NYSE:EFC) and CEO of Ellington Credit Company (NYSE:EARN). A mathematician by training (Harvard BA summa cum laude, Cambridge Master of Advanced Study), he represented the USA at the 21st IMO in 1979 and was a 1980 Putnam winner.

Notes6

• Quant employment verification: CONFIRMED. Laurence Penn is a Founding Partner, Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Ellington Management Group (joined 1995, shortly after its 1994 inception) and CEO/President of Ellington Financial Inc. (NYSE:EFC) and CEO of Ellington Credit Company (NYSE:EARN). Ellington is a $22B-AUM alternative investment manager focused on securitized assets and credit instruments, managed through hedge funds and private debt vehicles, so the employer is a genuine quantitative fixed-income manager. Identity is supported independently: Ellington's own bio states Penn represented the USA at the 21st IMO and won the 1980 Putnam, matching the IMO 1979 USA roster for Laurence Penn.
• Ellington's own biography independently links Laurence Penn to the Olympiad: it states he 'represented the United States in the 21st International Mathematics Olympiad held in London, England' and was 'one of five winners nationwide in the 1980 Putnam collegiate mathematics problem-solving competition'. This corroborates the IMO 1979 USA roster identity beyond the index.
• Career began at Lehman Brothers in 1984 following his Cambridge master's. From 1987 to 1990 he ran Lehman's structured transaction modeling group (structuring, modeling and computer-system design for MBS and ABS) and co-created 'BondTalk' (with Jonathan Amsterdam), described as the first high-level programming language designed to model Collateralized Mortgage Obligations. He later became a Managing Director and co-head of CMO origination and trading at Lehman, specializing in CMO derivatives.
• Penn's ~40-year career is a single continuous fixed-income structured-credit arc: Lehman Brothers MBS/ABS modeling and CMO trading (1984-1995), then Ellington from its 1994 founding to today (Vice Chairman & COO of the manager; CEO of two NYSE-listed Ellington vehicles). The quant-finance employment is effectively his entire professional life, not a phase.
• Identity is corroborated by three independent source types: the IMO 1979 USA roster (Laurence Penn, USA, bronze), Ellington's own leadership bio (which states he represented the USA at the 21st IMO and won the 1980 Putnam), and an Ellington Financial issuer filing that links Penn, Ellington, Harvard/Cambridge and the 21st IMO together.
• Ellington Management Group was founded in 1994 by Mike Vranos and Laurence Penn; Penn is listed as a founder. AUM ~$22B and ~170 employees (2026).
• He is Chief Executive Officer and President of Ellington Financial Inc. (NYSE:EFC) and serves as CEO of Ellington Credit Company (NYSE:EARN). The Ellington Financial team page lists 'Laurence Penn, Chief Executive Officer & President, Director'.
• At the IMO 1979 in London, Penn represented the USA; the individual-results table lists Laurence Penn (USA) with 52 points and a bronze award.
• Education: B.A. in Mathematics from Harvard University, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa (1979-1983 per LinkedIn); Master of Advanced Study in Mathematics from Cambridge University, where he studied as both a National Science Foundation Fellow and a Winston Churchill Scholar.
• Worked at Lehman Brothers from 1984 to 1995 (~11 years) before joining Ellington shortly after its 1994 founding; in Ellington's earlier years he was the senior portfolio manager primarily responsible for Agency RMBS investments.
• Ellington Credit Company (NYSE:EARN) detail: Penn has been its Chief Executive Officer and President since October 2012 and a board member (Interested Trustee) since its inception in 2012; he sits on the Fund's Disclosure and Pricing Committees.
• Penn holds concurrent senior roles across three affiliated but distinct entities: Vice Chairman/COO of the private manager (Ellington Management Group) plus CEO/President of the NYSE-listed Ellington Financial (EFC) and CEO of the NYSE-listed Ellington Credit (EARN) — an operating-executive anchor alongside founder-CEO Mike Vranos.