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Thomas Lapointe, CFA
Portfolio Manager

Mr. Lapointe joined Third Avenue in 2009. With his arrival, the firm launched the Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund to invest in high yield debt, bank debt, convertible securities, DIP securities, distressed situations and debt for equity reorganizations.

Mr. Lapointe has over 19 years of investment experience and was previously responsible for managing approximately $6 billion in high-yield assets, as Co-Head of High-Yield Investments for Columbia Management. Mr. Lapointe worked at Columbia for a decade and managed a team of 10 analysts. Earlier in his career, Mr. Lapointe was a convertible bond credit analyst at CIBC World Markets where he helped run a convertible arb hedge fund. Before that he was a high-yield analyst at AIG Global Investment Corp. and a financial analyst at Caldor Department Stores.

He has served on numerous ad hoc and official creditor committees. He served on the official creditor committee of Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel when it successfully emerged from bankruptcy. Mr. Lapointe also testified in bankruptcy court on behalf of Columbia during the reorganization of Hollywood Casino-Shreveport. As a bondholder he worked with other lenders and the management of XM Satellite to improve the company’s liquidity and grow the business.

Mr. Lapointe is a CFA Charterholder and holds a B.S. in Accounting and Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College. He is a Trustee for the Shenandoah Foundation, a not-for-profit that runs an educational program about tall ship sailing.
 

Michael Fineman, CFA
Portfolio Manager

Mr. Fineman is portfolio manager of the Third Avenue Special Situations Fund, a private partnership that invests in distressed securities and corporate reorganizations. As head of Third Avenue’s distressed debt research team, Mr. Fineman helps all of Third Avenue’s managers identify appropriate opportunities throughout the capital structure. He joined the firm in 2006.

Mr. Fineman has approximately 20 years of experience in distressed, restructuring and related roles. Prior to Third Avenue, he was a distressed investing analyst for Sanno Point Capital Management, a credit-driven hedge fund. He had previously worked in the Investment Banking and Restructuring Advisory Services division of Ernst & Young (since acquired by Macquarie Group) where he led corporate restructurings and reorganizations for debtors and creditors. He has 10 years experience as a sell side research analyst for Goldman Sachs, Alex, Brown and Raymond James.

Mr. Fineman has participated on many ad-hoc creditors committees including LandSource Communities LLC, U.S. Shipping, Grant Forest Products, Building Materials Holding Corporation and Collins and Aikman.

Mr. Fineman has an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and a B.S. in Business Administration with honors from the University of Delaware. He is a CFA Charterholder, a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts and holds a certification in Distressed Business Valuation.

Jonathan Krautmann
Research Analyst

Mr. Krautmann has been actively involved in many of Third Avenue’s largest distressed investments since he joined the firm in 2006.  Of note, he directed the firm’s investments in the unsecured bonds of GMAC which completed the largest debt exchange in U.S. corporate history in late 2008, and CIT Group which filed for pre-packaged bankruptcy in late 2009 and emerged in less than 6 weeks having restructured in excess of $30 billion of unsecured debt.  

Mr. Krautmann also served as lead analyst in connection with the firm’s investment in the first lien bank debt of Swift Transportation, the largest truckload carrier in the U.S., which restructured $2 billion in 1st lien bank debt in late 2009. 

Mr. Krautmann covers investments in a wide variety of industries ranging from transportation, specialty finance, refining, media, agricultural & forest products, automotive, retail and oil & gas.  His distressed experience encompasses first-hand knowledge of the workout process having participated in out-of-court exchanges, ad-hoc committees, Chapter 11/CCAA debt-for-equity investments, 363-auctions, and a number of rescue financing bids.

He previously worked in the restructuring group of Lazard Freres & Co., an advisory firm with a prominent debtor-focused distressed advisory practice.  While at Lazard, Mr. Krautmann advised on a number of large debtor assignments including the $38 billion restructuring of WorldCom, which at the time was the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Mr. Krautmann holds an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and a B.S. from Cornell University.

Joseph Zalewski
Research Analyst

Mr Zalewski, who joined Third Avenue in 2009, has analyzed high yield debt, distressed debt and special situations equity for nine years. At Third Avenue, he has been focusing on the gaming, media/broadcasting, and power sectors.

Previously, Mr. Zalewski was a distressed debt and special situations portfolio manager at Credit Suisse Securities. Prior to that he was a senior distressed debt and special situations analyst at investment firm 3V Capital, which he helped build out as the spun-off proprietary trading group of Libertas Partners. He began his fixed income career as a high-yield analyst at Lehman Brothers. Mr. Zalewski gained a background in securities analysis in investment banking at First Union Securities.

He has served on the board of EasyLink Services International Corp., and on the creditors committee for Interstate Bakeries Corp.

Mr. Zalewski has a B.A. in Economics and a B.A. in Political Science from Duke University and is a member of the board of directors of New York’s Red Fern Theatre Company.

Benjamin Lerner
Research Analyst

Mr. Lerner joined Third Avenue in 2010 from the Leveraged Finance group within the Global Capital Markets division at Morgan Stanley, where he originated, structured and executed leveraged loans and high yield bonds to finance leveraged buyouts, refinancings, recapitalizations and corporate M&A transactions. Within Leveraged Finance, Mr. Lerner worked on several notable transactions including the financing for the $3.1 billion acquisition of Procter & Gamble’s prescription-drug business by Warner Chilcott, a $600 million high yield bond offering for Talecris Biotherapeutics, and a $525 million high yield bond offering for Quintiles Transnational, a leading contract research company for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

Earlier in his career, he worked in the Loan Portfolio Management group of Morgan Stanley where he covered a large number of leveraged loan issuers. Notably, Mr. Lerner covered Swift Transportation, where he was actively involved in the organizing of the lender steering committee through the amending and restructuring of $2 billion of the company’s first lien bank debt in 2009.

Mr. Lerner holds a B.S. in Finance and Marketing from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.

Edwin Tai, CFA
Research Analyst

In 2010, Mr. Tai joined Third Avenue’s credit team from the Seaport Group where he was a managing director specializing in distressed debt research including public and private bonds, bank debt, trade claims and special purpose vehicles.

Prior to that Mr. Tai spent three years at Barclays Capital as a senior member on the distressed debt trading team managing more than $500 million. He was a director and analyst focusing on the power, oil & gas, consumer, technology, homebuilding and financial sectors. Before Barclays, Mr. Tai was an equity analyst covering global semiconductors at Credit Suisse.

Mr. Tai holds a B.S. in Finance and a B.A. in Economics from Rutgers University. He has an M.S. in Accounting from Babson College and was awarded a Masters of Business Administration from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mr. Tai is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Nathaniel Kirk
Research Analyst

Mr. Kirk joins Third Avenue after seven years at J.P. Morgan. While at J.P. Morgan, he was most recently in high yield research, specializing in health care and covering over 80 issuers. Nate was actively involved in the financing of six LBO’s, five dividend re-capitalizations, six debut high yield issuers in addition to over a dozen separate refinancings. In particular, he was closely involved with HCA from its LBO through its recent IPO, Bausch and Lomb, Biomet, Community Health, Tenet Healthcare, ConvaTec, National Mentor, ResCare and VWR International among others.

Prior to that, Nate worked on J.P. Morgan’s emerging markets trading desk where he traded Mexican, Turkish and Russian sovereign bonds and options as well as corporate debt for issuers including Pemex. He also worked with J.P. Morgan’s Principal Finance team performing due diligence for purchasing and securitizing non-performing loans in the United Kingdom and Germany. Nate will be working with the credit team covering performing through distressed investments.

Nate holds an M.A. in Economics from Cambridge University (2004) where he wrote his thesis on the causes as well as the probability and severity of international financial crises. He holds dual undergraduate degrees in Economics and Political Science from Yale University (2002). He was captain of the crew team at Yale and was stroke of the winning Cambridge Blue Boat in the 150th anniversary of the Cambridge/Oxford Boat Race.