TFCIX: How Much is that Asset in the Window? (III)

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TFCIX How Much is that Asset in the Window? (III)

A: How are you doing? Are you here for more enlightening banter?

Q: Not so well. Have you heard of the Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund [ TFCIX ]?

A: Uh, the one that is in the news?

Q: Come on.

A: Yes, I know about it, but not much more than I have recently read. Of all of Third Avenue’s Funds I know it least well.

Q: Weren’t you a bond manager who liked to take concentrated positions though? You should be able to say something about this mess.

A: I dealt mainly with investment grade credit. What’s more, I had a real balance sheet behind me at the life insurance company. An ordinary open-end mutual fund has investors that can leave whenever they want — often at the worst possible time for them, or in this case, those that could not get out.

The main difference was that I could never be forced to sell, under most conditions. I could buy and hold, and if the eventual credit of the borrower was good, my client would receive all that he expected. TFCIX faced significant redemptions, and increasingly had mostly bonds that could not be quickly sold, and thus, were difficult to value. That’s why they cut off redemptions — they couldn’t liquidate assets to give cash to customers on a favorable basis. Personally, I think setting up the liquidation trust was the best that could be done. That will allow Third Avenue to negotiate with interested buyers of the bonds without being rushed by redemptions. The remaining fundholders should be grateful for them doing this now, though it would have been better to act sooner.

Q: But I own shares in TFCIX and need the money now. What can I do?

A: Oh, my. My sympathies. You can’t do much. There might be some off the beaten track lenders out there that might take it off your hands, but they wear “panky rangs,” as a mortgage borrower once said to me.

Q: Panky Rangs?

A: Pinky rings. He was from the deep South. I.e., no one is going to give you a decent bid for your shares, even if you could find someone willing to do so. First, the value of the bonds is questionable, and the timing of the sales are uncertain.

In some ways, this reminds me a little of The London Whale incident.

Q: How is that relevant?

A: JP Morgan became too great of a part of the indexed credit derivatives market, and as a result, they lost the ability to value their positions, because they were too big relative to the market in which they traded. Their very buying and selling had a huge impact on the pricing. Though a value was placed on the positions, the entire situation was impossible to value accurately; you couldn’t assemble a group to buy it all.

Some clever hedge funds took note of it, and began taking the opposite positions, thinking that they were overvalued, and fed JP Morgan more of what it was already bloated with. Now maybe, if there hadn’t been so much press furor over it, together with the accounting questions that affected the financials of JP Morgan, they could have found a way out. JP Morgan’s balance sheet was big enough, and if you left them alone, they would have all self -liquidated. They might not have made the money they wanted that way, but it could have been done. As it was, they were forced to liquidate more rapidly, and if I recall, they even called upon one of the opposing hedge funds to help them.

In any case, the forced liquidation led to losses. Most forced liquidations do.

Q: So, what do think my shares are worth?

A: They are worth the liquidating distributions that you will receive.

Q: That’s no help.

A: Is the Federal Reserve willing to step up and buy the assets as they did with the Maiden Lane Trusts? No one has a bigger balance sheet than they do, oh, oops. Maybe they can’t do that anymore… who know where those emergency lending rules go…

Look, I’m sorry that you are stuck. The Madoff “investors” were stuck also. They had to wait quite a while. In the end, they got paid more than most imagined they ever would. Subject to credit conditions, I would suspect that the more time Third Avenue takes to liquidate, the more you will get.

Q: But that’s dribs and drabs over time, and I need it now.

A: Patience is a virtue. Make other adjustments; sell something else; scale back plans… it’s no different than most people have to do when they have a loss. It happens.

Q: I guess… but it would help to know what it was worth, so that I could estimate tradeoffs.

A: yes, it would, but the timing and amount of liquidations are uncertain, and the “market prices” don’t really exist for the underlying — they are too influenced by Third Avenue’s holdings.

Maybe they could have converted it into a closed-end fund, but that would have cost money, and there still would have been the valuation issue. People could have gotten paid now if that had happened, but I bet they would have blanched at the size of the unrealized losses. I would just accept the payments as they come, that will probably give the best return, subject to future credit conditions.

Q: Do we have to modify your statement was true when we first started this discussion:

Q: What is an asset worth?

A: An asset is worth whatever the highest bidder will pay for it at the time you offer it for sale.

After all, if it is worth the liquidating distributions if I wait, maybe you should add, “or the cash flows you receive over time.”

A: I will do that, and that is part of what I have been arguing for here, but the price here and now is not that. Just because you can’t sell it now doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value… we just don’t know what that value is.

Anyway, lunch is on me today, because there is another thing that you can’t sell that has value.

Q: What’s that?

A: Me. A friend.

Q: Let’s go…

 

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