Berkowitz Fund Scooped Up Financial Firms ‘Priced to Die’

Bruce Berkowitz, named by Morningstar Inc. (MORN) as the domestic stock-fund manager of the decade in January 2010, said he loaded up on stocks such as Bank of America Corp. (BAC) when they were “priced to die.”

Investors got a buying opportunity during and after the credit crunch when financial firms fell to levels that implied they would fail, Berkowitz said today during a question-and- answer session at the Columbia Student Investment Management Association Conference in New York.

Berkowitz is the managing member of Miami-based Fairholme Capital Management LLC. His top-performing Fairholme Fund was closed to new investors this week after it posted its best performance in a decade for 2012. The fund’s largest stakes have included American International Group Inc. (AIG) and Bank of America.

To contact the reporter on this story: Noah Buhayar in New York at nbuhayar@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Kraut at dkraut2@bloomberg.net