Overview

Long-run stock market returns are driven by a small number of exceptional companies.

The GIB AM European Focus Strategy aims to identify these high potential businesses and own them over a meaningful timeframe.

Characteristics

Europe (including the UK)

Long-only Equity

Large & Mid-cap

25-40 stocks

Approach

What we invest in

We seek out two types of opportunities for long-term value creation.

1. Compounding

We identify a small group of companies that we believe will drive superior long-term returns. By investing early and holding onto these firms, our portfolio benefits from their exponential growth.

2. Quality Value

We identify nearer-term opportunities based on what we consider to be demonstrably undervalued businesses, with fundamentally sound economics. These companies typically find themselves at an inflection point – predominantly with respect to their return on capital, but potentially also their growth rate.

How we invest

As investors, our hallmarks are:

Preparation and understanding - when selecting portfolio companies, we seek to understand more than just financial performance. Value is created by people, and so our confidence in the firm’s leadership and culture is crucial.

Discipline, patience and decisiveness - this allows us to focus on the long-term and instils the rigour not only to find outstanding opportunities, but to stick with them and filter out the noise inherent in capital markets.

'The real difference between success and failure in a corporation can very often be traced to the question of how well the organisation brings out the great energies and talents of its people.' Thomas Watson (IBM ex-CEO)