Martin Whitman, a legendary value investor, passed away on 16th April. He was the founder of Third Avenue Management. Marty, as he was better known as, was a passionate value investor and a teacher. He was associated and took classes at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management, named after him. He was a distinguished Management Fellow at the Yale School of Management and served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University Business School.
I first became aware of him about 15 years back, from a talk given by Seth Klarman, where Seth suggested reading Marty's book "The Aggressive Conservative Investor". I read the book and it was packed with a lot of good and simple insights. Two ideas that stuck with me were, i) buying companies with low margins because of low competitive intensity and ii) mean reversion of sectors.
Here are some links to help you know the man from his works:
Dear Fellow Shareholders - (online book) )https://mjwhitman.pressbooks.com/
