Weareleading investment counseling firm providing discretionary investment management services to private individuals, charitable foundations, endowments and pension funds.

Our central mission is to protect and build the capital of clients who are seeking superior long-term absolute returns, not short-term relative performance. We stress the value of our independent research and our business-like "bottom-up" value approach to the assessment of individual companies. We focus on a limited number of clients who meet our minimum investment requirements to ensure the highest standard of personal service. We are convinced that there is a relationship between the size and diversity of assets under management on one hand, and limitations to performance on the other. We prefer to manage concentrated portfolios, which we believe will maximize long-term returns.

Two main goals:

Our investment strategy is based on thorough research, analysis and evaluation.

Research

Our primary in-house research is detailed and comprehensive. Our analysis is based on databases that provide detailed financial and statistical information on a large number of publicly traded companies. Screening for potential ideas and information for US and Canadian companies comes from Multex, while information for International companies comes from Worldscope. Additional data and information is screened from Bloomberg, Value Line and a number of on-line resources. Investment and industry conferences, business publications and corporate research reports are also important research tools.

Analysis

Sound investment decisions require careful and experienced analysis. Investment decisions are based on detailed assessments of management, including on-site visits, and their approach to building substantial shareholder value in a disciplined manner.

Evaluation

We evaluate our investment decisions against a comprehensive set of criteria. We invest in companies that:

Price

We look for quality companies whose share prices are trading well below our estimate of intrinsic value. As proprietors, we consider whether we would be prepared to own the whole company at the current share price.

Margin of Safety

Based on a conservative set of assumptions, we purchase companies trading at a significant discount to our estimate of their intrinsic value, thereby providing for a margin of safety and opportunity for capital preservation.

Low Portfolio Turnover

We like to hold quality investments over the long-term, provided that the company continues to meet our fundamental valuation criteria. High turnover rates can be counter-productive to long-term returns, and result in high brokerage and transaction costs that eat away at investment returns and limit the beneficial impact of compound interest.

Sell Discipline

we expect to hold investments for long periods of time, we reassess each company continually and would consider selling the investment for any of the following reasons: