RiverPark Advisors has launched the RiverPark Focused Value Fund (Institutional: RFVIX; retail: RFVFX), a high conviction strategy to be managed by former hedge fund manager David Berkowitz.
Berkowitz is also joining RiverPark as the firm’s new co-chief investment officer. He is seeding the new fund with USD10 million of his own money, with other RiverPark principals investing an additional USD2 million.
“For some time we have wanted to add an equity value fund to the RiverPark fund family. We were just waiting to find the right manager,” says Morty Schaja, co- founder and chief executive officer at RiverPark. “David is a long-time friend whose management style fits perfectly with our goal of providing access to managers with a highly differentiated approach to investing.”
RiverPark Focused Value seeks long-term capital appreciation by investing in the equity securities of companies that the fund’s advisor believes, based on its internal research, are trading at a substantial discount to intrinsic value. The fund will invest primarily in the securities of US companies with market capitalisations in excess of USD10 billion.
Berkowitz and his research team will seek to identify opportunities that generally fall into one of two categories – high quality businesses at reasonable prices and special situations that create significant distortions in the market’s perception of value, such as spin-offs, mergers and acquisitions, changes in company management, and other corporate events.
“Even in today’s market, we think it’s possible to find 20 to 30 companies that are compelling from a value investor’s perspective,” said Berkowitz. Berkowitz uses a fundamental, bottom up, rigorous, research-intensive approach to picking stocks, developing a quantitative framework for valuation and seeking to make purchases when investments are available at substantial discounts to a conservative assessment of value.
“We’re looking for the two or three key drivers of a stock’s performance,” Berkowitz adds. “With every investment we ask ourselves ‘what do I have to believe will happen (and not happen)’ to make it compelling for us to own this stock?”
Berkowitz brings more than 20 years of financial industry experience to his management of the fund, most recently as a partner overseeing risk and strategy for Ziff Brothers Investments. He began his investment career in 1992, co-founding Gotham Partners, a value-oriented investment vehicle, along with William Ackman. He subsequently served as chief investment officer for a major New York City-based family office and as founder and portfolio manager for a long-only private investment fund. Berkowitz holds bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in chemical engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
