Greenhaven Associates

Edgar Wachenheim III

Edgar Wachenheim III runs Greenhaven Associates, a value-oriented firm he founded in 1987 when Central National-Gottesman's investment division was spun off on its own. Born in 1937, he graduated from Williams College in 1959 and took an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1966, where he was named a Baker Scholar. After starting out as a securities analyst at Goldman Sachs, he joined Central National-Gottesman in 1969 and rose to head its investment division a decade later, before setting up Greenhaven. Greenhaven is a contrarian, long-term shop built on deep fundamental research rather than models or short-term speculation. Wachenheim looks for undervalued companies with limited downside, and he is willing to buy into businesses that are broadly out of favor. He has described his preference for sectors facing what he calls "tremendous disfavor," placing bets on names others have abandoned and holding them patiently while the market comes around. His clients are chiefly wealthy families, university endowments, and nonprofit organizations. In 2016 he put his approach into print with "Common Stocks and Common Sense," a book of case studies drawn from his own career that argues for pragmatism and behavioral discipline over complex theory. The book is the closest thing to a set of rules he has ever published; the firm itself remains a small, privately held operation, and Wachenheim, now in his eighties, still leads it as CEO and chairman.