Whitman Throws Down the Gauntlet

The latest shareholder letter from The Third Avenue Fund has Marty Whitman firing back at William Ackman, a hedge fund manager I have written about previously, over MBIA:

"...invested in MBIA Surplus Notes at a yield to call of slightly over 14% per annum. The MBIA Surplus Notes appear to carry very small, or non-existent, credit risk, and thus are considered by management to be a near-cash investment (albeit the MBIA Surplus Notes, unlike cash equivalents, are subject to market price fluctuations)."

"On February 11th, TAVF acquired from MBIA, 10,610,425 shares of MBIA Common at $12.15 per share. This brought the Fund’s holding to 23,148,845 shares of MBIA Common, or about 10% of the issue outstanding.MBIA is now strongly capitalized. It ought to qualify easily for an AAA rating with a $17 billion claims paying ability. If so qualified, MBIA would be in a position to underwrite a large amount of profitable new business."

And then Whitman gets the knives out:

"Ackman does not seem to understand the Property and Casualty (“P&C”) Insurance business and its sources of profitability. Ackman believes that the Bond Insurer Model does not work because the insureds are able to buy an AAA credit rating so cheaply. The facts are that Bond Insurance is one of the more profitable P&C businesses."

"(Ackman) argues that prices, as determined by marks to market, or mark to model, always deserve 100% weight. This is arrant nonsense. Market prices do deserve dominant weight in an analysis where the portfolio consists wholly of common stocks and non-performing loans held in trading accounts. Market prices deserve little or no weight, when the portfolio consists of performing loans, and in force policies, to be held to maturity."

"(Ackman) pays little attention to the rules of seniority and priority of payment in evaluating, or understanding, senior tranches of debt. The argument that if an entity is in trouble, every liability on the balance sheet of that entity is also in trouble is strictly “amateur hour”. Frequently, senior issues sail through troubles unscathed."

Here is my post on MBIA from February 2008.