Interview With Bob Robotti: Value Investing Is Extremely Fertile Today

ValueWalk’s Raul Panganiban interviews Bob Robotti the president and CIO of Robotti Value Investors. Full transcript below

Q2 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc

Interview with Bob Robotti

Transcript

Raul: Good morning podcast listeners, today is a very special episode. I am here with Bob Robotti. Bob is the president and CIO of Robotti Value Investors. At the beginning of his career, he worked in public accounting before coming to Wall Street. Prior to forming Robotti and Company in 1983, he was vice president and shareholder Gabelli and Company Inc. He earned a B.S. from Bucknell University MBA in accounting from Pace University. I want to welcome Bob to the show. I want to welcome all of our listeners to a very special episode.

Welcome to Value Talks with Raul.

Okay, I just wanted to welcome all of our listeners to a very special episode. I have Bob of Robotti Value Investors. Bob, welcome to the show.

Bob: Hello, thanks, nice to be here.

Raul: All right. Yes, if you can just tell me about your background and what led you to finance and investing?

Bob: Sure. In college, I was an accounting major, so I ended up working for a small public accounting firm here in New York. I was extremely fortunate because the accounting firm used to audit a lot of different investment advisory firms. The main client that I worked on, like four years of public account was Tweedy Brown. Of course, Tweedy Brown is an iconic value firm that was close linkage to Graham Newman, partially because of physical proximity. Their offices were adjacent to each other.

That happened when Graham Newman, Graham decided to close up shop and go to France and read classics and do other things. A number of people from Graham Newman walked into Tweedy’s office, including Tom Nap and Walter Schloss. They were both there when I audited the firm. That was my introduction to the investing. I knew nothing really about it before. I was corrupted by a classic finance education. Instead, I knew what Tweedy owned and what they bought and what they sold and could speak with Ed Erickson who ran the firm at the time, and could speak to Ed Schloss, Walter’s son, and talk with him. Therefore, understanding how they thought about investing was my primer to the business.