Skills for Distressed Investing

What does it take to be a successful distressed investor? According to distressed veteran Mark Patterson, the first trait he looks for in a young hire is decisiveness. Distressed investors should be “terrified” by the “range of uncertainties” but able to make “decisive recommendations,” as opposed to merely providing a set of facts, says the Chairman of MatlinPatterson Global Advisors.

Topics discussed in this segment also include why Patterson believes the distressed strategy does not require a separate allocation within an institutional portfolio, his recommendations for investing in distressed vehicles through economic cycles, and why the “highly unpredictable level of government intervention” makes it harder for him to be as decisive an investor today versus during prior downturns.