Third Avenue Funds

Martin J. Whitman, CFA
Chairman and Co-Portfolio Manager of Third Avenue Value Fund

Mr. Whitman famously distilled value investing into the mantra “safe and cheap” and has proven for more than 50 years that active, opportunistic investors can find under-priced securities in companies with strong balance sheets. He is also an adept control investor who has led the rehabilitations of Nabors Industries and Covanta Energy among others.

After serving in the Navy during World War II and then attending college on the G.I. bill, Mr. Whitman joined the ranks of Wall Street as an analyst at Shearson Hammill & Co.  The Street’s simplistic analysis and focus on short term earnings was not for him. When he encountered a timber company rich with assets but no visible earnings power he realized there was a better way. Later, while working at the family office of William Rosenwald, son of a founder of Sears Roebuck, he developed a risk aversion commensurate with the responsibility of managing another family’s legacy. His ability to find safety through the careful study of assets enabled him later to venture where other investors wouldn’t like the bankrupt Penn Central railroad or troubled utilities like Consumers Power Co. of Michigan and the Public Service Company of New Hampshire.

Mr. Whitman founded the predecessor to the Third Avenue Funds in 1986 and M.J. Whitman, a full service broker-dealer affiliated with Third Avenue in 1974. He has managed the flagship Third Avenue Value Fund since its inception in 1990 and was Third Avenue’s Chief Investment Officer from its founding through January 2010. A dedicated investment mentor, Mr. Whitman named Ian Lapey as his successor to manage the Value Fund in 2006 after mentoring him when he arrived at Third Avenue in 2001. He continues to work closely with all members of Third Avenue’s investment team.

For over 30 years, Mr. Whitman was a Distinguished Management Fellow at the Yale School of Management. He is also an honorary trustee at Syracuse University, his undergraduate alma mater and home to the Whitman School of Management. He is the author of The Aggressive Conservative Investor, Value Investing ­– A Balanced Approach and Distress Investing: Principles And Technique. He holds a masters degree in Economics from The New School For Social Research and is a magna cum laude Syracuse graduate. Mr. Whitman is a board member at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. He is a frequent speaker and commenter within the financial services community.

David Barse
President, Chief Executive Officer

During two decades under Mr. Barse’s leadership, Third Avenue has grown from a one fund boutique into a multi-platform asset manager with value-driven strategies devoted to global stocks, real estate, small caps and credit. Third Avenue offers alternative investment vehicles, separately managed accounts, subadvised portfolios, UCITS and mutual funds to private and institutional clients. Mr. Barse’s strategic business development plan fostered Third Avenue’s growth in assets under management to $16 billion (as of December 31, 2009).

Prior to joining Third Avenue in 1991, Mr. Barse had a distinguished career in bankruptcy and corporate law.  At the creditors’ rights firm of Zalkin Rodin & Goodman LLP he primarily represented commercial banks in the workouts of non-performing loans and the financing of companies in Chapter 11 through debtor-in-possession loans. Later at Robinson, Silverman, Pearce, Aronsohn & Berman LLP, he pioneered the development of the secondary market for distressed debt.

One of Mr. Barse’s clients was Third Avenue founder, Marty Whitman who managed money through his eponymous broker-dealer. Though Mr. Barse’s legal career was on a fast track Mr. Whitman’s enthusiasm for investing infected him and joined Mr. Whitman’s broker-dealer, making the switch from attorney to apprentice. He soon became a top producer as he and Mr. Whitman developed a plan to enter the asset management business through mutual funds and separately managed accounts. Mr. Barse became CEO soon after.

During the 1990s, Mr. Whitman and Mr. Barse worked on many successful distressed investments. However, starting in the late 1990s it became clear that passive investing in the common stocks of well-capitalized companies was a far more advantageous strategy as there was a dearth of distressed opportunities at that time.  Over the years, Mr. Whitman and Mr. Barse participated in numerous distressed investments, including Kmart, USG, Covanta Energy and Collins and Aikman. In each case, Third Avenue either controlled or had elements of control in the reorganization of the company. Mr. Barse currently serves on the board of Covanta Holdings Corporation, a market leader in energy from waste technology.

Mr. Barse is frequently sought after by the financial media, including CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Fox Business News, Forbes, Fortune, Business Week and Bloomberg where he has spoken about Third Avenue’s bottom-up value investing approach in the context of broad economic themes and current events as well as the re-emergence of distressed investment opportunities as a result of the economic crisis that emerged in 2008.

Mr. Barse received a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School and a B.A. from George Washington University. He is a member of the Brooklyn Law School Board of Trustees and sits on the Board of Directors of the City Parks Foundation.

Curtis Jensen
Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager of Third Avenue Small Cap Value Fund

 

Mr. Jensen has been Third Avenue’s Chief Investment Officer since 2003, sharing the role with Martin J. Whitman through January 2010. As CIO he leads Third Avenue’s investment team and is a senior member of its Risk Committee. Mr. Jensen manages the Third Avenue Small-Cap Value Fund, several sub-advised portfolios, the Small-Cap Value UCITS and is co-manager of the Third Avenue Variable Series Trust.  He joined Third Avenue in 1995.

Previously, Mr. Jensen held various corporate finance positions with Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust Company and the investment bank Enright & Company. He briefly left finance to help a friend launch Ciao Bella Gelato, now a nationally known manufacturer and distributor of frozen desserts that was recently purchased by a private equity firm. Mr. Jensen holds an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management (where he studied under Marty Whitman) and a B.A. in Economics from Williams College.

Mr. Jensen serves on the nominating committee for the board of directors of Investor AB, Sweden’s largest industrial holding company with investments across Europe, the U.S. and Asia.

Tom Gandolfo, CPA
Chief Risk Officer

Mr. Gandolfo is responsible for overseeing the firm's investment and enterprise risk management processes by identifying, analyzing and monitoring risk, and enforcing the policies and controls over portfolio management and other operational functions within the firm.

He joined the firm in 2008, after serving as Managing Director in the Capital Markets and Structured Credit Group at Ambac Financial Group. Prior to that, he was Ambac's Chief Financial Officer and led all aspects of the company's capital management and financial reporting. As CFO of a New York Stock Exchange listed public company, he worked closely with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Earlier in his career, Mr. Gandolfo was a senior audit manager at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he audited and consulted for some of the firm's largest multinational clients.

As the financial crisis peaked in 2008 and 2009, he helped the firm avoid investments in several high-profile financially troubled firms, serving as lead analyst on financial stocks before accepting the Chief Risk Officer appointment in 2011.

Mr. Gandolfo holds a B.A. in Accounting with honors from Bentley College and is Certified Public Accountant.

 

Value

Ian Lapey
Portfolio Manager

Mr. Lapey is co-manager of the flagship Third Avenue Value Fund. A senior member of Third Avenue’s investment team, he also manages Third Avenue’s value and small-cap subadvised portfolios and the Third Avenue Value Fund UCITS for offshore investors. He joined Third Avenue in 2001.

Before he joined Third Avenue, Mr. Lapey analyzed housing and furniture stocks at Credit Suisse First Boston and Salomon Brothers.  Earlier in his career he was a financial analyst with Revlon and an accountant with Ernst & Young.

Mr. Lapey often works closely with the management teams of companies in which Third Avenue is invested. He served on the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Haynes International during its reorganization in 2004 and sat on the Board of Directors of Canfor, a Canadian forest products company, from 2007-2008. 

Mr. Lapey holds an M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School of Business, an M.S. in Accounting from Northeastern University’s Graduate School of Professional Accounting and a B.A. in Economics from Williams College.

Michael Lehmann
Portfolio Manager

 

Mr. Lehmann helped to introduce and develop Third Avenue’s Value Equity Separate Accounts when he joined the firm in 1998.  He manages concentrated portfolios made up of the highest conviction stocks from Third Avenue’s value equity, small cap, real estate and international strategies.

Previously, Mr. Lehmann analyzed small-cap stocks and special situations for Robert M. Cohen & Co. a proprietary trading firm that also ran separate account and hedge fund portfolios.

As Vice President of Gabelli Funds, Mr. Lehmann managed separate accounts while also producing due diligence research into special situations for the entire fund group. He worked closely with Mario Gabelli on institutional private accounts.

Mr. Lehmann was a stand-out collegiate baseball player for the University of Southern California and then for Fordham University where he graduated with a B.S. in Finance.

Yang Lie
Portfolio Manager

Ms. Lie is responsible for ensuring the integrity of Third Avenue’s global research process across asset classes and coordinating the research efforts of the team. She is a senior member of Third Avenue’s investment team and manages one of the firm’s largest subadvised accounts. She joined Third Avenue in 1996 and helped develop the firm’s high net worth and institutional separate accounts business. She became Director of Third Avenue’s growing research team in 2008.

Previously she was an equities analyst at Prudential Securities where she covered technology and imaging stocks. Ms. Lie began her career at Motorola where she managed a team of software engineers and developed both software and hardware components for encryption key management systems.

Ms Lie has an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Chicago and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University.

 

Charles Page, CFA
Research Analyst

Mr. Page analyzes small-cap securities for Third Avenue and works directly with Curtis Jensen. He joined the firm in 2006.

Mr. Page was a small-cap value analyst with Citizens Advisers, a socially responsible investment firm where he covered a broad range of stocks with an emphasis on the financial, consumer, industrial and technology sectors. At Citizens, Mr. Page first read Marty Whitman’s books and adopted the creditor's perspective in his equity analysis.  Earlier in his career he helped cover technology companies at Robertson Stephens.

Mr. Page has an M.B.A. from MIT Sloan School of Management and a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University. He is also a CFA Charterholder and a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts.

 

Evan Strain
Research Analyst

Mr. Strain conducts original and supportive fundamental research on behalf of all of the strategies covered by Third Avenue’s investment team. He joined Third Avenue in 2011.

Previously, Mr. Strain was an Associate with Dorchester Management, a value-oriented hedge fund. Prior to that, he held internship positions at Merrill Lynch, RBC and Brittany Capital, a boutique investment bank.

Mr. Strain holds a B.S. in Finance and Accounting from New York University’s Stern School of Business. It was during his time at NYU that he first studied and became attracted to Marty Whitman’s investment philosophy. Mr. Strain has passed all three levels of the CFA Program.

 

International

Amit Wadhwaney
Portfolio Manager

Mr. Wadhwaney has managed foreign stock portfolios since 1996. He has been particularly interested in emerging economies where he has long believed that market inefficiencies favor bottom-up value investors.

Mr. Wadhwaney is the founding manager of the Third Avenue International Value Fund, an open end mutual fund as well as the Third Avenue Global Value Fund and the Third Avenue Emerging Markets Fund. Mr. Wadhwaney also manages the Third Avenue International Value Fund UCITS for overseas investors as well as institutional separate accounts.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Wadhwaney was a securities analyst, and subsequently Director of Research, for M.J. Whitman, Third Avenue’s affiliated broker-dealer. Mr. Wadhwaney was also a paper and forest products analyst at Bunting Warburg, a Canadian brokerage firm. He began his career at Domtar, a Canadian forest products company.

During the mid-1990s Mr. Wadhwaney briefly left Third Avenue in order to establish his Global Value Fund as a limited partnership in association with some longtime partners of Marty Whitman. He rejoined Third Avenue after four years away, bringing his partnership with him and leading the launch of the firm’s first internationally focused mutual fund. He established and has fostered Third Avenue’s international research effort and his team has served all of the firm’s strategies where mandates allow for global investments.

He holds an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Chicago, a B.A. with honors and an M.A. in Economics from Concordia University in Montreal (where he also taught economics) and B.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Minnesota.  He speaks French, Spanish, Hindi, Sindhi, Gujarati and English.

 

Matthew Fine, CFA
Portfolio Manager

Mr. Fine joined Third Avenue 11 years ago and began working with Mr. Wadhwaney in an effort to identify investment opportunities in the wake of the Argentine crisis of 2001. Mr. Fine has conducted investment research on location in more than twenty countries across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. He is co-portfolio manager of the Third Avenue International Value Fund.

He joined Third Avenue's research and portfolio management team as a Research Assistant, the first position typically held by Third Avenue’s homegrown analysts. He became a Senior Research Analyst in 2008 and a principal of the firm in 2009.

Mr. Fine holds a B.A. in Economics from Hamilton College and is a CFA Charterholder and a member of the New York Society of Securities Analysts.

Jakub Rehor, CFA
Senior Research Analyst

Mr. Rehor, who joined Third Avenue in 2004, has analyzed foreign and emerging markets securities since 1997. Previously he was a stock analyst at Putnam Investments and at Sanford C. Bernsteinand a business analyst for McKinsey & Co starting in 1995.
 
Mr. Rehor grew up in the Czech Republic and participated in the student resistance during the Velvet Revolution, building a nationwide computer network connecting student union cells around the country, and serving on President Václav Havel’s security detail during his inauguration in 1989.

He holds a B.A. in Economics from Yale University and is a CFA Charterholder and member of the New York Society of Security Analysis. He speaks Czech, Russian, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and English.

 

Credit

Benjamin Lerner
Research Analyst

Mr. Lerner joined Third Avenue in 2010 from the Leveraged Finance group within the Global Capital Markets division at Morgan Stanley, where he originated, structured and executed leveraged loans and high yield bonds to finance leveraged buyouts, refinancings, recapitalizations and corporate M&A transactions. Within Leveraged Finance, Mr. Lerner worked on several notable transactions including the financing for the $3.1 billion acquisition of Procter & Gamble’s prescription-drug business by Warner Chilcott, a $600 million high yield bond offering for Talecris Biotherapeutics, and a $525 million high yield bond offering for Quintiles Transnational, a leading contract research company for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

Earlier in his career, he worked in the Loan Portfolio Management group of Morgan Stanley where he covered a large number of leveraged loan issuers. Notably, Mr. Lerner covered Swift Transportation, where he was actively involved in the organizing of the lender steering committee through the amending and restructuring of $2 billion of the company’s first lien bank debt in 2009.

Mr. Lerner holds a B.S. in Finance and Marketing from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.

Edwin Tai, CFA
Research Analyst

In 2010, Mr. Tai joined Third Avenue’s credit team from the Seaport Group where he was a managing director specializing in distressed debt research including public and private bonds, bank debt, trade claims and special purpose vehicles.

Prior to that Mr. Tai spent three years at Barclays Capital as a senior member on the distressed debt trading team managing more than $500 million. He was a director and analyst focusing on the power, oil & gas, consumer, technology, homebuilding and financial sectors. Before Barclays, Mr. Tai was an equity analyst covering global semiconductors at Credit Suisse.

Mr. Tai holds a B.S. in Finance and a B.A. in Economics from Rutgers University. He has an M.S. in Accounting from Babson College and was awarded a Masters of Business Administration from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mr. Tai is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Joseph Zalewski
Research Analyst

Mr. Zalewski has been analyzing high yield debt, distressed debt and special situations equity for nine years.  He began consulting with Third Avenue in 2008 as part of the team behind the Special Situations Fund and leading up the launch of the Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund.  He joined the firm full time in 2010.

Previously, Mr. Zalewski was a distressed debt and special situations portfolio manager at Credit Suisse Securities. Prior to that he was a senior distressed debt and special situations analyst at investment firm 3V Capital, which he helped build out as the spun-off proprietary trading group of Libertas Partners. He began his fixed income career as a high-yield analyst at Lehman Brothers.   Mr. Zalewski gained a background in securities analysis in investment banking at First Union Securities.

He has served on the board of EasyLink Services International Corp., and on the creditors committee for Interstate Bakeries Corp.

Mr. Zalewski has a B.A. in Economics and a B.A. in Political Science from Duke University and is a member of the board of directors of New York’s Red Fern Theatre Company.

Benny Yau
Distressed Credit Trader

Mr. Yau is the head credit trader focused on distressed and high-yield securities across the capital structure. He manages credit trading for all of Third Avenue funds and is experienced with bank debt, bonds, busted convertibles, credit derivatives and reorganized equity.
 
Mr. Yau was attracted to Third Avenue Management because of the firm's emphasis on deep-dive credit analysis and its roots in distressed investing. In addition to credit trading, Mr. Yau is responsible for generating new trade ideas and providing market color with his extensive sales & trading relationships with the broker dealers and other buy side firms. He joined the firm in 2009.

Most recently, Mr. Yau was a High-Yield Credit Trader at Barclays Capital where he managed the cable, media and utilities trading pod. Prior to that, he was a Credit Derivatives Trader at Credit Suisse that helped launch the CDS business in 2000. Prior to that, he worked in the Principal Finance Group at Goldman Sachs which invested in distressed companies.

Mr. Yau received an MBA from the University of Chicago and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

Clay Bernabeo
Equities Trader

Mr. Bernabeo works on Third Avenue’s Global Trading Desk executing domestic and foreign equity trades through brokers in the U.S. and around the world.  He joined Third Avenue in 2001 as part of the operations team and started trading in 2004.

Mr. Bernabeo has a B.S. in Economics with a specialization in Finance from Rutgers University