I have an upcoming interview for a Portfolio Analyst position at the Baupost Group in Boston and was wondering if anyone knows anything about this firm’s culture, performance etc. I did some reseach and found out that the fund is run by Seth Klarman (Margin of Safety) and his affinity for SPACs. The fund has had a pretty good track record but I couldn’t find any current numbers.
u got a Baupost interview and didn’t know who runs it? how did you get that interview in the first place?!!! google around, u’ll find something past the first page.
good luck man, baupost is a great group and it should be a phenomenal opportunity. i heard they were moderately down in 2008 with a large (>50%) cash position. i recall hearing that they were up close to 50% in 2007.
What are they doing now that SPAC’s aren’t really coming out anymore?
Wow - Baupost is an amazing firm - you should do your homework. They aren’t just investing in SPAC’s. Baupost is a deep-value multi-strategy hedge fund. I use multi-strat loosely because the firms mandate is to invest in out of favor undervalues securities irrespective of cap structure, instrument, etc. Seth is notoriously anti-Wall Street and if you don’t have a contrarian bent then you won’t fit in. Want to know what Baupost is about - e-mail me offline valueaddict83@gmail.com. You have some reading to do. Also google Seth - there is a video posted online where he discusses his firm values, leadership style, etc. Its titled the Psychology of Leadership and was given at HBS a few years ago. Good luck.
Positive carry when is your interview?
Thanks ValueAddict, I’ll shoot you an email soon…I’m interviewing for their generalist portoflio analyst position so yea I do have a lot of homework to do but thanks for that link. I’ll def take a look. chung.da.neu, my interview is in two weeks and I’m meeting a bunch of PM’s
interesting good luck!!!
Chance to work w/ Seth Klarman???
you are big pimpin’ positivecarry, lots of people would love the chance to interview with that company, myself included. Good luck, do your prepartion (you’ll learn a lot too) and hopefully you kill it
Positivecarry, can I ask what your background is, if you don’t mind?
TheAliMan, thanks…to be honest i didnt know much about the firm before I got the interview and I have come to realize that its a great firm. Hopefully things will work out. l2djae, I worked in asset management at a bb for 2 years and finishing up my first year at the PE group of another bb which has started laying off people hence the reason for my move.
Hey positive how did you go about getting the interview? thanks
So Klarman is supposed to be a “deep value” guy. What does that mean, exactly? What is the difference between “value” and “deep value”? Is it just that the margin of safety needs to be substantially larger?
deep value is usually synonymous with distressed investing (including liquidations) - no relation to the degree of undervaluation.
oh yeah forgot to mention - Klarman just raised a few billion over the last couple of months. The firm has been closed for a fairly long time. Have to give credit to Greenblatt for that piece of information though. The firm has been on a hiring binge.
chung.da.neu Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hey positive how did you go about getting the > interview? thanks I would assume a headhunter found his info and contacted him.
You may need to read: 1, Margin of Safety 2, security analysis 6th edition (Leading editor: Seth Klarman) 3, video of a speech given by Seth Klarman at the Columbia Business School. I can email you 1 and 3 if you are interested.
Having talked with one of their analysts, they’re definitely contrarians. Skepticism plays well, I get the sense that they’re more technical than intuitive (classic value investors. They typically don’t use stock options, but had close to 50% cash in 2005. They moved a major chunk of it into long positions in CDS to bet against housing stocks. As my acquaintance said, “it’s a great time - I sit around waiting fot things to fall apart, and then we have money to spend”. We took some of our undergrads there to show them how the other half lives. A very, very impressive bunch. I think they were down about 7-10% for calendar 2008.