An interview with Michael Alsalem, head of AzValor’s office in London.
Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc, Also read Lear Capital: Financial Products You Should Avoid?
Meet Michael Alsalem, Head Of Azvalor's Office In London
Transcript
Since my deep respect and longstanding friendship with AzValor and Fernando I think that they are a uncredible captains of the of the business and the fraternity of value investors as whittled somewhat in recent years. It was great to partner with two individuals who have such a strong and deep value approach to investing. One that resonates with me and one that I admire and value obviously is a technique that you liked. When did you become a disciple of value investing. I began investing in a battle over 13 years ago and in all my incarnations and businesses where I've worked it's always been about finding securities that are to be undervalued which in my view creates a margin of safety and investing or underwriting with a view to creating a lot of asymmetry in optionality in that regard. What you do is create the most amount of payoff for the least amount of upfront premium spent. And in a world where there's many opportunities of that ilk but many of them overlooked particularly due to lack of research. It seems to me like a very good time to start working on that in Europe with these two great guys. You're you're an American. Yes I believe or you grew up in America that right. I grew up in France. I matriculated in college in the States. And so broadly prior to my move to London ten years ago I spent about half my life in the states and half my life in Europe America. So in terms of your asset management career it was mainly in the space and half in Europe or primarily in London.
I began working in Boston for a value investment shop. That was almost a spin out of the Paphos group then moved on to work at two great chops in New York and then moved to London in 2009 and subsequently opened up my own value investment firm and then subsequent to that joined evil or untested. As far as London is concerned obviously too many of us on the British side of the equation. It's probably the biggest asset management centre in the world. Arguably as far as you're concerned what do you think. Opening the London office office for us. I think London has a lot of foot traffic from firms that visit the city from all over the world perhaps more so than other major cities. The companies are you looking to invest in. Yeah absolutely. In addition London harbours as you say a big financial industry and associated with that a lot of silos such as political silos journalistic silos legal silos and I think as we marshal our forces to find opportunities in which to invest it it's easier to do it from from London because you already have if you will a network effect or a critical mass of of of people involved in investing in that in that specific city. I know that you've already started work obviously in the last six months as I said earlier the guys have been over from here in Madrid.
