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We are an investment house that thrives on adding value for our investors, rather than building volume for us: a philosophy that sets us apart from the herd.

Other points of difference are that we determine the most advantageous amount of assets that can be effectively managed in each of our funds, our investment managers are empowered to make, and are accountable for, their own decisions and our rewards – in the form of performance-related fees – are linked directly to how well we manage our clients’ assets.

JOHCM is a truly entrepreneurial investment house where fund managers have all the conditions they need to outperform and where our clients’ best interests are always to the fore.

Nichola Pease
Chief Executive
J O Hambro Capital Management

An entrepreneurial culture where individuality thrives

The free-thinking and innovative environment that exists at JOHCM attracts fund managers who have great confidence in their stock-picking skills. These are people who have worked for major investment firms where they were bound to a corporate process, or restricted to core stock lists and set asset allocations. Life isn’t like that at JOHCM. Our managers are free to steer their funds - within agreed risk criteria - where they choose. Nor are they required to report to a Chief Investment Officer or investment committees – we have neither. Instead we expect people to go their own way and to deploy their proven and individual talents to their full extent and all for the benefit of our investors.

Whenever we decide to open a new fund, we will only do so once we have found the right manager for that asset class. We look for seasoned and dynamic managers who have a track record of success and are completely performance-driven. What attracts talented managers to JOHCM is an environment where there are no distractions from the task in hand and managers have all they need to deliver and sustain outperformance. Finding the right manager for a new fund sometimes entails a long wait, but we have always been willing to bide our time for the right person.

Limiting the size of each fund’s assets helps managers to deliver and sustain outperformance

The definition of success for many investment houses is to attract the largest possible amount of investment to their funds – the bigger the fund, the more they earn in annual management charges. That approach may work for others, but it’s not for us. Every time we launch a fund – going back to our first OEIC in 2001 - we predetermine, in conjunction with the fund manager, the maximum amount of money that he or she is prepared to run in that fund. Once any fund reaches its predetermined limit, it is closed to new investors, giving the manager the conditions in which they can deliver and sustain outperformance and stay focused on the interests of the fund’s investors.

Equipped and positioned to outperform

Talented people, excellent research and hard work are every investment manager’s stock in trade. But it requires more than just first-rate stock picking skills to exceed benchmarks; it also takes a special environment where all the supporting conditions and incentives that fund managers need to outperform are in place - as indeed they are at JOHCM.

Unlike the larger investment houses, our managers spend little time on management and marketing-related activities. Being heavily involved in such matters does little to engender investment outperformance. By distancing managers from some of the peripheral activities associated with investment management and giving them the degree of scope and total support they need, makes our managers accountable for the performance of the funds in their charge. And when fund managers have all they need to get results, they have no reason to move on and every reason to stay. All of the above, coupled with our unceasing drive for outperformance, the self imposed limits on fund sizes and firmly committed fund managers, directly aligns our interests with those of our clients.

Remuneration linked to performance

Producing consistent, superior performance is the overriding goal at JOHCM. Of course there’s hardly an active fund manager in the land who would claim otherwise. Very few however can say this: when we add value to our clients’ assets, we are rewarded accordingly; if we don’t, then any shortfall in performance has to be made up - no matter how long that might take - before we can charge clients any further performance fees.

Involvement through an owner/manager culture

Many of our fund managers personally invest in the fund or funds they run, and every senior fund manager has a stake in the firm’s overall fortunes – a benefit that enables us to attract individuals who might otherwise have established their own firms. Furthermore, other key members of staff also have a financial interest in the business. The stakeholder culture at JOHCM ensures that everyone involved cares about the business and, by definition, cares about how successful our investors are.

JOHCM was launched in 1993 and today is majority owned by the people who work in the business. In 1998 we introduced our first hedge fund, followed by our first OEICs in 2001. Currently, the JOHCM Group employs just under 100 people and as of 31 March 2007, funds under management stood at £3.9 billion.

Our clients tend to be relatively experienced investors such as private banks, family offices, fund of funds, sophisticated private investors and professional intermediaries. Unlike the majority of boutiques, a high proportion of our clients – 45%+ in fact – are based in Continental Europe.