With respct to valunvestr's comment taht some mutual fund companies are publicly-held whereas others are private, it is indeed an important matter to consider when purchasing a mutual fund.
The potential conflict-of-interest between the fund managers and the mangement of the fund companies on the one hand and the customers on the other is an area of concern and is addressed by Louis Lowenstein in his book The Investor's Dilemma, recently reviewed in Barron's.
Thus there are several points to be made: first, at least 95% of all the mutual funds currently open for ivnestment are wothless wastes of money. And it also happens that most of those funds are, indeed, products of for-profit, publicly-held companies, usually banks or insurance conglomerates. Furthermore, a lot of the fund managers of publicly-owned companies do not even invest one red cent of their own money in the funds they manage; they prefer to play Monopoly with their customers' hard-earned savings.
But it is also true that many of the worthless funds are managed by employee-owned or privately-held companies. And as Dan Wiener has pointed out recently, a surprisingly large number of Vanguard's fund managers don't care to invest in the funds they manage--and Vanguard is run as something of an investor-owned co-operative venture.
Thus there is no real cause-an-effect relationship that can be demonstrated between above-average returns of a mutual fund and the fact that the company is privately owned.
Finally, as 'tato reminds us, Third Avenue funds are no longer privately owned. So, it seems the question is now moot.
I have conducted some additional due diligence on PNDVX and it still looks pretty appealing. For example, NFJ describes itself as a "deep value" shop, which sounds good to me.
Jagor
