Michael E. Lewitt has managed billions for institutional and high-net-worth clients and created several of the worlds top-ranked credit and hedge funds over a 29-year career. He is widely regarded as the No. 1 credit strategist working today. Michael graduated from Brown University and was a PhD ...
moreMichael E. Lewitt has managed billions for institutional and high-net-worth clients and created several of the worlds top-ranked credit and hedge funds over a 29-year career. He is widely regarded as the No. 1 credit strategist working today. Michael graduated from Brown University and was a PhD candidate at Yale before earning a JD and LLM in taxation from NYU Law School. He spent two years in the tax department of Simpson Thacher Bartlett.
In 1987, he joined legendary investment banking firm Drexel Burnham Lambert. He served alongside Leon Black in NYC, then Michael Milken in Beverly Hills, working on billions of dollars of MA and corporate finance transactions until the firm filed for bankruptcy in 1990. He then co-founded Harch Capital Management (HCM) to manage the Milken familys money, as well as the Drexel Burnham Employee Partnerships, a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of private equity securities that came out of the 1980s LBO boom. Under his leadership, HCM built up a successful money management business.
Michael's investment team managed $1.25 billion in CLOs, one of the top-ranked high-yield credit funds (as ranked by Nelsons), and a dedicated short fund. They produced strong risk-adjusted returns for clients like Omega Advisors, Investec Bank, Goldman Sachs, and multi-billion-dollar state pension funds LACERA and TRS. Today he manages The Third Friday Total Return Fund, L.P., which was awarded Best US Option Strategies Hedge Fund (Since Inception) by BarclayHedge in August 2016, and earned the distinction of 2016 Hedge Fund Manager of the Year for the entire U.S. from Wealth Finance International.
But Mr. Lewitt is perhaps best-known for his written market analysis and predictions. The New York Times published his widely read editorial about the pending bailout of AIG in 2008. He was featured alongside Warren Buffett in the Financial Times and has contributed to Forbes, Barrons, The New Republic, El Mundo, and PBS NewsHour. Michaels Credit Strategist newsletter has gained a large following around the world since 2001. It is read not only by the financial community but by the media and policy makers. (He was recognized by the Financial Times for correctly forecasting the 2001-2 credit market collapse and the 2008 financial crisis.)
He is also the author of The Death of Capital (Wiley, 2010) and The Committee to Destroy the World (Wiley, 2016). Today Michael is the editor of Sure Money. He also contributes to Money Morning as the Global Credit Strategist.
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