Value Investor Awards

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LVIC Fund Manager Lifetime Achievement Award 2019

Voting has now closed for the 2019 awards – the winners were announced at the London Value Investor Conference on 14th May

Prior Winners:

Richard Cousins – 2016
Tim Martin – 2017
Simon Wolfson – 2018

Henry Engelhardt & David Stevens – 2019

Prior Winners:

Prem Watsa – 2016
Warren Buffett – 2017
Michael O’Leary – 2018

Bruce Flatt – 2019

Prior Winners:

Charles Brandes – 2015
Jean-Marie Eveillard – 2016
Anthony Bolton – 2017
Joel Greenblatt – 2018

Seth Klarman – 2019

CEO Awards

The capital allocator awards were introduced in 2016 to recognise CEOs for the key talent of capital allocation. On average, 70% of shareholder funds are retained in businesses and not paid out to shareholders. Effective deployment of retained capital therefore makes a profound difference to investor returns. To recognise this key talent, the London Value Investor Conference launched two Awards for the Public company CEOs with the best Capital Allocation record judged over multiple years. Here were the nominees for 2019:

The LVIC Award for Best Capital Allocator – UK listed companies Nominees 2019:

Bruce Flatt – Brookfield Asset Management
Steven & Mitchell Rales – Danaher Corporation
Tom Gayner – Markel Corporation
John Malone – Liberty Media
John Elkann – Exor

The LVIC Award for Best Capital Allocator – Global listed companies Nominees 2019:

Henry Engelhardt & David Stephens – Admiral Group
David Thomas – Barratt Developments
Mark Coombs – Ashmore Group
Mike Norris – Computacenter
Andrew Williams – Halma

The criteria used for judging good capital allocation discipline will include such things as:

Returning capital to shareholders either through dividends or share buybacks when these offer the best available return on capital
Saving shareholders money by controlling costs in an unusually disciplined way
Deploying growth capex with a keen focus on return on investment
Shutting down or selling poor return, non-core or loss-making businesses
Acquiring businesses or large assets at prices which deliver superior long term shareholder returns

“It’s very much the Rolls-Royce of the investor conference market”
Paul Scott, Stockopedia
“The people in that room were a more powerful cadre of the powerhouse of investment than has been gathered for a very long time”
Jonathan Ruffer, Ruffer LLP
“It’s kind of like Glastonbury isn’t it, for the Value Investing community”
Nick Train, Lindsell Train
“What I like about it is that it is a practitioners conference and it’s an opportunity to come and hear from your peers about the work that they are doing and how they see value investing”
Hassan Elmasry, Independent Franchise Partners
“I think people really look forward to it and enjoy it. There’s a good bunch of people here who have travelled a reasonable way – the speaker after me was from Hong Kong and there’s a big Canadian crew and a big US crew – people come from around the world to see this”
Nate Dalton, Affiliated Managers Group
“If somebody’s already been through that process of seeing what the conference is about and then is willing to pay their money for the effort of coming here, that’s a great filtering process.”
Gary Channon, Phoenix Asset Management
“The conference has become a part of the furniture of the London scene. You can discover that is what lies inside you – that you are innately a value investor.”
Richard Oldfield, Oldfield Partners
“I do speak at a fair number of conferences to investor bases, this one is really quite a good list – some very, very good investors present and some very interesting speakers”
Jon Moulton, Better Capital
“Definitely worth it and I know a number of people who have ‘ummed and arred’ about coming along and I’m sure that they will be regretting that they didn’t come today – and it’s only going to get better as far as I can see”
Tim Green, Private Investor
“Having sat through the whole day as I wanted to come and hear all of the speakers – I’ve been really impressed by the quality”
Anthony Bolton, Fidelity
“I’ve got a bunch of business cards to add to my collection and some folks I’ve been looking forward to meeting, plus some firms I didn’t even know existed but sound really interesting and I’m looking forward to building on that relationship base”
Mason Morfit, ValueAct Capital
“You couldn’t find that anywhere else really, where you’re speaking to the principals who have been voted on to the Board [of Microsoft] to effect change”
David Shapiro, Willis Towers Watson
“What I was impressed with is, because the subject is very similar, value investing, they found a variety of ways of attacking the same subject. I was also very impressed, having done this in another location, of seeing them stay on target time-wise so that it moves along at a great pace and I think the audience is greatly rewarded by that discipline”
Don Yacktman, Yacktman Asset Management
“Very well organised and it was a treat for investors like us to hear some great speakers”
Roli Saxena, Drona Capital
“I came last year and I liked it so much that I have been looking forward to today ever since”
Dominique Levy, Sonian Capital
“We’e got a very sophisticated audience who are used to value investing – I think this is a good audience”
David Samra, Artisan Partners
“The profile of the speakers is one of the main reasons that I came”
Niels Borgen, Private Investor
“When you look at the ideas speakers have put forward in previous years and how they have performed over the last few years, they’ve done very well – if that performance continues it would be quite remarkable. It does show that you can pick up some good ideas at a conference of this sort”
Jonathan Mills, Metropolis Capital
“I came last year as well and I thought that it was the most outstanding event that I have been to”
Leon Boros, Equity Strategies

C.T. Fitzpatrick	Sir Martin Sorrell
Robert Hagstrom	Jonathan Ruffer
Jennifer Wallace	David Harding
Rajiv Jain	Alex Roepers
Nick Purves	Ian Lance
Martin Walker	Ronald Chan
Ben Preston	Alex Wright
Mark Pearson	Matthew McLennan
Andrew Hollingworth	Richard Oldfield (Moderator)
David Shapiro (Moderator)

Value Invest London