French international investor and “Fund Manager Lifetime Achievement” award winner Jean Marie Eveillard helms the $44.72 billion First Eagle Investment Management LLC. According to the fund’s recent disclosure with SEC, it has made several tweaks to its portfolio in the third quarter. Eveillard initiated a bullish bet on data storage company Western Digital Corp (Nasdaq: WDC) and Texas Instruments Incorporated (Nasdaq: TXN) while reigning in the fund’s positions in Seagate Technology PLC (Nasdaq: STX).
Mr. Jean Marie Eveillard started his career in 1962 with Societe Generale. He then relocated to the United States where he joined the SoGen International Fund as an analyst in 1968. In 1979, he was appointed as the portfolio manager of the Fund, later named the First Eagle Global Fund. He then went on to manage the First Eagle Overseas and First Eagle Gold Funds at their inception in 1993 as well as the First Eagle U.S. Value Fund in September 2001.
After managing the Funds for over 30 years, Mr. Eveillard now serves as Senior Adviser and member of the Board Trustees to First Eagle Funds and as a Senior Vice President of First Eagle Investment Management, LLC. According to TipRanks data, the fund has made a portfolio gain of +44.0% since June 2013 and has a 3-year annualized return of 9.97%.
Mr. Eveillard is a graduate of Écoles des Hautes Études Commerciales, an esteemed French graduate school for economic studies. He was named Morningstar’s International Manager of the Year in 2001, and in 2003 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Morningstar for building one of the most successful long-term records in the investment business.
A true value investor, Mr. Eveillard steers away from trends and sectors most popular to the investing public. Instead, he searches the globe for original, obscure and unique situations, which are more likely to be undervalued. His preference demands patience.
