By Claire Makin
Michael van Biema is not just a New York-based value investor – he is more an intellectual heir to the people who started the deep-value concept in the first place.
A former professor of finance at Columbia Business School, van Biema put theory into practice in 2004 when he launched van Biema Value Partners, which invests with small and undiscovered ‘deep value’ managers in funds with typically less than $200 million in assets.
His aim was to gain exposure to two powerful sources of potential excess return in which he believes passionately – deep value itself, and the ranks of small but talented managers who beaver away below the radar of most investors. “Putting the two together we thought would be a compelling combination,” says van Biema, who is both chief executive officer and chief investment officer of the business.
Now recognised as a high-alpha niche...