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Graham & Doddsville Graham & Doddsville An investment newsletter from the students of Columbia Business School Inside this issue: Issue XXXII Winter 2018 The 27th Annual Omega Advisors, Inc. Graham & Dodd At the end of 1991, following 25 years of service, Lee retired Breakfast P. 3 from his positions as a General Partner of Goldman, Sachs & Leon Cooperman, Co. and as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management to organize and launch an investment CFA ’67 P. 4 management business, Omega Advisors, Inc. David Poppe CC ’86 & John Harris P. 12 At Goldman Sachs, Lee spent 15 years as a Partner and one Leon year (1990-1991) as of-counsel to the Management Committee. Student Pitches P. 21 Cooperman, In 1989, he became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of C.T. Fitzpatrick, CFA ’67 Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Chief Investment Officer of the firm’s equity product line, managing the GS CFA P. 27 Capital Growth Fund, an open-end mutual fund, for one-and-a-half years. Prior to Seth Fischer P. 35 those appointments, Lee spent 22 years in the Investment Research Department as Editors: Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb Abheek Bhattacharya MBA 2018 David Poppe joined Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb in 1999 after a 12-year career in Matthew Mann, CFA journalism. Mr. Poppe graduated with a MBA 2018 BA from Columbia University in 1986. Adam Schloss, CFA John Harris joined Ruane, Cunniff & MBA 2018 Goldfarb in August 2003. Prior to joining David Poppe John Harris the firm, he spent two years as an analyst Ryder Cleary CC ’86 MBA 2019 at Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. (KKR), a private equity firm based in New York Gregory Roberson, Esq. and San Francisco. Before joining KKR, he served as an analyst in the investment MBA 2019 banking division at Goldman, Sachs & Co. Mr. Harris graduated with an AB from Harvard College in 1999, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. David Zheng MBA 2019 Oasis Vulcan Value Management Partners1 Visit us at: Company www.grahamanddodd.com Rolf Heitmeyer www.csima.info C.T. Fitzpatrick Seth Fischer is the founded Vulcan founder and Chief Value Partners in Investment Officer of 2007 to manage Seth Fischer Oasis Management C.T. his personal Company, an international investment Fitzpatrick, CFA capital. Since manager headquartered in Hong Kong. inception, all four Oasis was founded by Mr. Fischer in 2002 strategies have peer rankings in the top following a successful seven-year career 4% of value managers in their respective at Highbridge Capital Management, (Continued on page 2) where he managed the firm’s Asia 1Please see page 10 for required disclosures Page 2 Vulcan Value Partners (Continued from page 1) categories.2 Prior to University of Alabama. I Management and had a great founding Vulcan Value majored in finance and experience there. It was a lot Partners, C.T. worked as a minored in English. As my of fun, but the main reason I principal and portfolio coursework evolved and as I went back to school was to manager at Southeastern had exposure to more things, I transition my career. In 1990, Asset Management. discovered that I was I started with Southeastern During his 17-year tenure, passionate about investing. Asset Management in the team at Southeastern Memphis, also known as Asset Management While I was in school in the Longleaf Partners. I was very achieved double digit early 1980s, coursework fortunate there had been some C.T. returns well ahead of emphasized efficient markets, changes in the senior Fitzpatrick, CFA inflation and was ranked in CAPM, and all those things. management of that company. top 5% of money managers Conceptually, a lot of it made It left a hole, allowing some over five, ten, and twenty sense but some of it didn’t. It younger guys, including myself, year periods according to was counter to how my dad to take on a lot of Callan and Associates. actually did things in the real responsibility quickly. I became world. I started challenging my a partner in the company C.T. earned his MBA in professors and I got pushback. pretty early on. Finance from the Owen It just didn’t feel right. Of Graduate School of course, you want to I started as a generalist. We Management at Vanderbilt regurgitate it for the test, but were finding things in the real University. He also has a then do you really agree with estate area that were really BS in Corporate Finance it? cheap and interesting. We from the University of increasingly gravitated to it Alabama. I read Graham and Dodd’s simply because there was Security Analysis just to try to more opportunity there. Long Graham & Doddsville understand, “Okay, what’s the story short, we started a real (G&D): Could you tell us other side of this?” It really estate effort, and I was very about how you got started in appealed to me and struck a fortunate to be tapped to lead the industry? nerve. By the time I graduated, that effort. I went from being a I wanted to be a value generalist to a real estate C.T. Fitzpatrick (CTF): I investor. It was the mid-80s expert. Then, in the early was a weird kid. I was reading and Wall Street was booming. I 2000s, we shut that program the Wall Street Journal when I had some opportunities on the down because basically we was 14 years old. My father money management side, but I rode cap rates down from 12% was my mentor. He was an also had an opportunity to to 8% and thought the bargains entrepreneur and I was just work here in New York in had dried up. Obviously we got curious about what he was investment banking. out too early. I became a doing. It became an intellectual generalist again. At that point, curiosity. My dad was a value G&D: What was that job? we had moved into investor but he didn’t know it. international and global. That He didn’t call himself a value CTF: I worked at Merrill was really fun. investor. He did a lot of things Lynch capital markets. I met in real estate and he would try my wife. She was a trader at Then, in early 2007, I decided to buy properties at a discount what now is Credit Suisse First it was time for me to move on. to replacement value. He’d be Boston, which was First I’d been there for 17 years. I looking for things that had fat Boston at the time. It was a think anyone who’s passionate cap rates, things like that. great experience but I was only about what they do, and on the edge of what I wanted strives to continuously Since I knew I wanted to go to do. I was an agent, not a improve, will keep their core into business, I did not have principal. principles but continue to the patience to pursue liberal refine them over time. I began arts, so I went straight into I went back to graduate school to feel very strongly about corporate finance at the at Vanderbilt’s Owen School of some things that I wanted to (Continued on page 3) 2 Source: Vulcan Value Partners Large Cap Composite versus peer group of the eVestment US Large Cap Value Equity Universe. Vulcan Value Partners Small Cap Composite versus peer group of the eVestment US Small Cap Value Equity Universe. Information provided is supplemental information for the Large Cap Composite, Focus Composite, Focus Plus Composite, and Small Cap Composite for period ending September 30, 2017 as of October 18, 2017. Page 3 Vulcan Value Partners do in my own personal company’s assets are opaque it had net cash on its balance evolution. and difficult to value with sheet. Unlike all the others precision. Even if you were that I mentioned, it generated I left Southeastern to start able to accurately value the a huge free cash flow coupon Vulcan Value Partners in order assets, and the asset values and had an inherently stable to put these principles into dropped just a little bit, the value. They all became practice. I had a wonderful equity value could evaporate discounted, but we bought the experience there and I’ll be because of the financial companies that had inherently forever grateful for being part leverage on the balance sheet. stable values. of Southeastern. I wouldn’t be You could buy J.P. Morgan at a here today if I had not been discount to tangible book and My evolution as an investor there first. believe you had a margin of was that it's not enough to buy safety, but the margin of safety a company that is statistically G&D: Is there a particular would be ephemeral because cheap at a point in time. It has philosophy or framework that the company’s value is to have what we call at Vulcan they use? inherently unstable. Value Partners a sustainable margin of safety. CTF: When I was there my That is an example of a initial emphasis was just on G&D: In addition to valuation. The cheaper, the “My evolution as an sustainable margin of safety, better. There were other parts what other things are critical to the analysis, of course, but investor was that it's parts of your investment the energy went to finding not enough to buy a philosophy? discounted companies. The bigger the discount, the more company that is CTF: Time horizon is really interesting, and that’s the work important.
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