Joshua S. Friedman is Co-Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Canyon Partners. Canyon Partners is a global value-oriented alternative asset management firm with offices in the US, UK, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea. Founded in 1990 and Partner owned, Canyon employs a variety of event-driven and opportunistic strategies across a broad spectrum of asset classes. Canyon’s flagship fund, the Canyon Value Realization Fund, twice received Institutional Investor’s “Credit-Focused Hedge Fund Manager of the Year” Award. Additionally, the Canyon Structured Asset Fund received Institutional Investor’s “Hybrid Hedge Fund of the Year” Award. Mr. Friedman has also received Institutional Investor’s “Lifetime Achievement” Award.
Mr. Friedman is a graduate of Harvard College (1976) (B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Physics), Oxford University (1978) (M.A., honors, Politics and Economics, Marshall Scholar), Harvard Business School (1980) (M.B.A., Baker Scholar) and Harvard Law School (1982) (J.D., Sears Prize, magna cum laude). Prior to forming Canyon, Mr. Friedman was Director of Capital Markets for High Yield and Private Placements at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Prior to working at Drexel, he worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Goldman Sachs in New York.
Mr. Friedman is a member of the George W. Bush Presidential Center Executive Advisory Council. Additionally, Mr. Friedman serves on the boards and/or the investment committees of a number of endowments and foundations including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Broad Foundation, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). In 2014, Mr. Friedman received Institutional Investor’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Mr. Friedman is a former chair of the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees of Caltech (2013-2019). He also formerly served as a Trustee for the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2015-2020) and the J. Paul Getty Trust (2019-2021). Mr. Friedman also formerly served on the Board of Advisors of the UCLA Hospital Department of Neurosurgery (2009-2020); the UCLA Anderson School of Management (2017-2020); and the California Science Center (2010-2012).
Mr. Friedman and his wife, Beth, reside in Dallas and have three sons. Mr. and Mrs. Friedman are 2019 recipients of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.