Ibbotson International Shares High Opportunities - Marathon

Marathon   

Investment Style: Value (Global)

Marathon Asset Management LLP (Marathon) is located in London and is 100.0 percent employee-owned and managed by its staff. Marathon was founded in 1986 by its three Investment Directors Bill Arah, Jeremy Hosking, and Neil Ostrer, who own the majority of equity.

Marathon is an active, bottom-up, qualitative manager with a largely contrarian approach. The main tenet of the investment philosophy is that profitability, as defined by return on assets, is inversely related to levels of competition. Marathon looks for qualitative factors (such as competitive environment and barriers to entry) that support improved returns by a business rather than being heavily-driven by detailed quantitative modelling. Portfolios are expected to have both a value and a mid-small cap bias.

Marathon’s investment strategy focuses on qualitative considerations. The investment team screens the investible universe using its own qualitative judgements. Each Investment Director and analyst analyses the competitive and capital environment of industries using their own individual methods and approaches.

Marathon typically seeks to invest in industries where competition is declining, and looks to buy the strongest (rather than the cheapest) company in an industry poised to gain permanent market share. Marathon also seeks to invest in industries with very high barriers to entry (particularly capital requirements), although acknowledges that there are few well-priced stocks with these characteristics. Country allocation is a small component of the process. The main objective is to identify countries with positive government influence and strong investor sentiment.

Each of Marathon's three Investment Directors is responsible for constructing a regional portfolio (Bill Arah - Japan and parts of South-East Asia; Jeremy Hosking - US and parts of South-East Asia; and Neil Ostrer - Europe), with the support of at least one analyst (including some assigned a small portion of the assets by their Investment Director). The regional portfolios are then aggregated on the basis of regional weights set by Jeremy Hosking, who has ultimate responsibility for the global shares product.

Marathon has a small team of dedicated analysts, led by the three Investment Directors (Bill Arah, Jeremy Hosking, and Neil Ostrer). Investment staff are located in London, but specialise by region.