Meet Our Team
EXPERIENCED. DEDICATED. FOCUSED. TRUSTED.
Michael Scharf
FOUNDER & CHAIRMAN
Michael J. Scharf is our Founder and Chairman. His career in business began with the acquisition of Unimet Corp. in 1970. He sold Unimet to Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd. in 1974 and hasn’t looked back since. He has a long and distinguished track record of acquiring, building and growing companies in a variety of sectors.
Michael acquired Edgcomb Corp. in 1983 and quickly turned the business into one of the largest metals distribution companies in the United States. He then acquired a small company called Niagara Cold Drawn Steel in 1993. By 2006, Niagara Corporation, as it was then known, was the largest producer of specialty cold-finished steel bars in the world. He sold Niagara to Kohlberg & Co. in 2006.
Additionally, Michael was a Director and major shareholder of Maxcor Financial, a leading inter-dealer brokerage firm that was sold to affiliates of Cantor Fitzgerald in 2003.
He graduated from Princeton University in 1964 and Harvard Business School in 1967.
Andrew Scharf
CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER
Andrew Scharf has been a Principal of Scharf Brothers since 2010 and currently serves as its Chief Investment Officer. In his role at the firm, Mr. Scharf oversees a portfolio of the company’s private investments, public equities and real estate. He began his career as an investment banker at Peter J. Solomon Co., where he analyzed and advised companies in the food, beverage, retail, consumer and industrial sectors. Mr. Scharf has over 10 years of investment experience, including in public and private equity markets and in the consumer sector. Mr. Scharf is currently a board member of Four Sigmatic, one of the fastest growing adaptogen and mushroom-based supplement and nutrition companies in the United States. He is also an investor in Lola, a rapidly-growing female focused better-for-you wellness company. Additionally, Mr. Scharf led Scharf Brothers’ seed investment in OurCrowd, which is now the world’s largest equity crowdfunding platform for high-growth companies, having raised over $1.5 billion for over 200 rapidly growing businesses in a variety of sectors.
He previously served as a Member of the Investment Committee for the Wharton Impact Investment Fund at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Scharf graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and is an active leader of and participant in many not-for-profit and charitable endeavors. In his spare time, Mr. Scharf enjoys collecting American photography, walking Biscuit, his rambunctious Goldendoodle and, most of all, spending time with his amazing wife and their two wonderful sons.