Edward Lampert Speech

By
Edward Lampert, Founder and Manager of ESL Investments, at a conference.

I started my firm in 1988 and began investing. I was inspired by Warren Buffett’s letters
while still working on the Arbitrage desk at Goldman Sachs. We consider ourselves “Aggressive Conservative” investors

In investing, we seek to do a few things well, namely
1.) Understand the Business
2.) Understand the People Running the Business and
3.) Get safety from the price that we pay

Generally speaking, we focus on absolute returns in making investments. By the way,
past performance as a measure of quality is wildly overrated. It would make a lot more
sense to place more emphasis on and think about the people that put the track record
together and the quality and value of the portfolio that they are managing.

Follow the link above for his account of the Kmart takeover

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