Jeffrey Gendell: More Info

Jeffrey Gendell’s Greenwich-based fund, Tontine, seemed to have the Midas touch. It earned 100% returns in 2003 and 2005 in its Tontine Partners fund, buying shares in sectors where other institutions feared to tread. “Gendell’s specialty is picking a macro-styled theme, buying very large positions in companies that benefit from that theme, and then working with or pressuring management to improve shareholder returns”.

The success quickly drove the fund to $11 billion in assets and earned Jeffrey Gendell over a billion dollars.

Tontine was named after an older annuity initiated by Lorenzo de Tonti in which investors desire to be ‘the last one standing. In this arrangement, investors pool their money together and as they die off the remaining investors split the deceased’s stakes. The last living investor then inherits the riches. By naming his firm as such, Gendell’s desire is obviously to be the last investor living. The problem here is that in 2008 he nearly fell flat on his face. But in 2009, came a figurative and literal new light, yielding new profits and a comeback.

Gendell, among other donations, is a donor to Duke University and a partial-owner of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team.

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