Amit Wadhwaney - From Montreal to Moerus: Amit Wadhwaney's Deep Value Discipline

**Tano Santos** (0:01)
Welcome to a new edition of the Value Investing with Legends podcast. My name is Tano Santos, the Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Asset Management and Finance here at Columbia Business School, and the Faculty Director at the Heilbrunn Center for Grand Ham and Dollar Investing. I'm here with my co-host, Michael Mauboussin, and a Jam Professor at Columbia Business School and also a faculty member at the Heilbrunn Center. Michael, how are you? I haven't seen you in a while.

**Michael Mauboussin** (0:23)
I know I'm doing great, Tano. Great to see you. I'm really, really looking forward to our discussion today.

**Tano Santos** (0:29)
Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be great. Before we introduce our guest today, I want to run an idea through you and our guest. I would welcome his views as well. It's that we have decided to start doing something new here at the business school, and it is to give a grand lecture every year in January that we call the stock market a year in review. Because why embarrass oneself only in the privacy in the classroom, when you can do it in front of everyone? What do you think of that idea? Will you come, Michael, to provide support?

**Michael Mauboussin** (1:00)
Yes, I would. I love the idea. It's always fun to have time to unpack what's happened in markets and perhaps look forward a little bit. It's always an exciting time. But thinking about what's going on with the world of artificial intelligence and really a resurgence in international markets. So there's a lot of fun stuff to talk about in review. I think it's great.

**Tano Santos** (1:19)
And just to have a fun with the entire community here at the business school, everyone is welcome to talk about the always fascinating comings and goings of markets everywhere. Let's get into our program today. One of the ideas of this podcast is not only to interview great investors, but also great investors who should be better known by the Value Investing community because of their record. The record of our guest today is simply a thing of wonder, their insights or the uniqueness of their portfolios. And we're happy to bring one such investor today to the Value Investing with Legends podcast.
Our guest today is Amit Wadhwaney, the Founding Manager of Moerus Worldwide Value Fund, which was launched in 2015 Moerus' five-year record is on the north of an analyzed 23%, beating the index by more than 10 percentage points. So it's really a remarkable performance of the last five years. Prior to co-founding Moerus, Mr. Wadhwaney was a portfolio manager and partner at Third Avenue Management, working with someone who has a great value investing or was a great value investing legend, Marty Whitman. He was there, I believe, that he met many of his coworkers now at Moerus. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago, my alma mater, and a BA with honors, and an MA in economics from Concordia University. Total economic class is there, I believe, so a fellow professor, always good, and holds a BS degree in chemical engineering and mathematics from the University of Minnesota. So a very interesting academic background. I'm looking forward to getting to know that. Amit Wadhwaney, welcome to the Value Investing with Legends podcast.

**Amit Wadhwaney** (2:51)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

**Michael Mauboussin** (2:53)
We always start with some biographical details of our guests, to get to know them a little bit better. Tell us a little bit about where you grew up, and was there any inkling about your future in investing in your youth?

**Amit Wadhwaney** (3:04)
A group in Bombay, India, known to most people these days as Mumbai. My exposure to finance at the time was de minimis, non-existent really. Sensing that I had an aptitude for things quantitative, I was pointing in the direction of the science stream in high school. So nothing could have been further from my mind than finance or matters of commerce. This is complete terra incognita for me at the time anyway.

**Tano Santos** (3:27)
Can you tell us a little bit about how do you get to Concordia? How was your path then?

**Amit Wadhwaney** (3:32)
I started at the University of Minnesota, intended to get a degree in chemical engineering. I found it way less than engaging. Mathematics, on the other hand, was great fun. So I did a second degree in mathematics. That's what kept me sane. I was already there, so why not? At that time, a career in pure sciences was probably in the cards. Probably. But nothing so far pointed out in the direction in finance. Now, the first baby steps to its finance took place when I moved to Montreal to finish up in Minnesota. My day job, I had evenings off. It is ridiculous to have something that's circumscribed by a nine-to-five schedule, but it happened at that time in my life, which is a great thing.