Inside the Brunswick Fund: 20 Years of Resilient Investing
Justin O’Brien, Brunswick Fund Portfolio Manager recently joined David Bruty, in the latest edition of Escala Partners Perspectives podcast.
The conversation covers insights into the Fund’s 20-year history and its disciplined investment strategy—delivering steady returns, lower volatility, and flexibility across market cycles.
This 30-minute episode, recorded from the U.S. during Justin’s recent research trip, includes key topics such as:
How we have navigated Market Cycles over the 24-year journey
Founded in 2001 during the tech bubble, Cooper Investors has successfully managed the business through the GFC, COVID-19, and shifting economic conditions, maintaining a systematic, long-term approach.
The Brunswick’s 21 year track record has always been defined by a ‘tortoise over the hare’ mindset of steady growth, underpinned by our observational investment process.
Small Focused Teams
How Justin O’Brien, Stuart McLachlan (Deputy PM), and analyst Gordon Lee are supported by CI Founder and CIO Peter Cooper.
Alongside the broader CI specialist investment team, their focus remains on identifying value, managing risk, and applying a systematic investment approach.
Understanding the benefits of a flexible Investment Strategy
Investing across small, mid, and large ASX-listed companies, with up to 25% international exposure, the Fund has leveraged global comparisons (“comp-cos”) to identify opportunities—such as Intuit (accounting software) and Louisiana-Pacific (building materials).
Three Capital Pools: the Fund balances risk and return through:
Compounders – Growth businesses like Xero.
Reversionary Stocks – Turnarounds, such as Regis Healthcare, which benefited from improved government funding.
Real Assets & Income – Asset-backed investments, including Washington Soul Pattinson and Aspen Group (affordable housing).
Research-Driven Investing
The VOF framework (Value Latency, Operating & Strategic Trends, and Focused Management Behaviour) guides investment decisions.
Comp-Co’s explained – the Funds ability to identifying Ferguson’s undervaluation vs. Reece before its U.S. re-rating and capitalizing on spinoffs like ESAB and Graincorp.
Since Cooper Investors’ founding in 2001, our clients have been the beneficiaries of the investment teams identifying and owning several of the best family-owned and founder-led businesses in Australia and across the globe. Portfolio Manager Allan Goldstein’s specific success identifying this cohort was the genesis of the firm launching the Cooper Investors Family and Founder Fund in 2019, which has delivered 11.8% (Gross) and 10.49% (Net) annualised returns.¹
The fund has a singular focus, to own a concentrated global portfolio of listed equities (20-30) that meet our guidelines of founder led, family linked, or employee-owned companies. The fund predominantly invests in companies with less than <$100bn market cap as it seeks to back and invest in the great next generation family and founder businesses.
The unique traits of family and founder-led businesses we seek are:
Monetary skin and soul in the game (Our fund average is 25% insider ownership, more than four times the average of the ASX200).
These companies share a significant proportion of shares controlled by people within the company itself, where there is alignment for continued success and growth. We believe that this also leads to greater ‘soul’ in the game, where there is a deeper connection and dedication to the business, acting as stewards for its long-term growth and legacy.
Genuine long-term thinkers and intelligent capital allocators. We look for companies with a combination of operational excellence, capital deployment, a focus on customer satisfaction and a commitment to getting better (not just bigger).
Several studies (UBS, McKinsey, Credit Suisse) have found that investing behind these traits has led to long-term outperformance with lower risk.¹ Our attraction to this cohort is the risk/reward mindset these companies have. The entrepreneurial streak combined with a capital preservation attitude that supports long term compounding.
Cooper Investors Family and Founder Fund: Average Insider Ownership
Average Insider Ownership Comparison
As long-term observational investors, Cooper Investors utilises vast networks to get inside and around these companies to fully understand the opportunities and risks. We average around 1,000 company visits per year, investing in our networks to uncover underappreciated quality and value. Many of these companies are not covered extensively by research analysts (if at all), providing further opportunity for value creation.
Our raison d’etre is finding the holy trinity of value latency, supportive operating trends, and focused management teams. These networks and relationships help us understand what is happening at the coal face of industry and company operations.
Both Allan Goldstein, Portfolio Manager and John Mitchelhill (Research Analyst) see attractive investment opportunities in their focus area and expect EPS growth of 12% plus dividends for our portfolio over the coming year.2 Furthermore, the volatile and uncertain backdrop suggests it’s a prudent time to seek leaders with aligned motives and long-term ambitions. History tells us these proprietorial businesses not only weather the storms but emerge from them stronger than before.
We believe great businesses aren’t built in quarters—but over decades.
At a Glance – Family and Founder Fund:
Danaher Corporation
US-based Danaher Corporation was the inspiration for establishing the Family and Founder Fund, where Peter Cooper and Allan Goldstein were on a research trip for the CI Global Equities Fund, with Danaher a stock held in the Global Equities Fund in 2010. The conversation started following a factory visit to one of Danaher’s operations in the outer suburbs of Illinois in 2014. The visit highlighted the business quality, management capabilities and value latency for shareholders. The Danaher business system was real. The conviction levels in the stock were high and the idea of a dedicated portfolio of only these rare, listed, founder and family businesses first took hold.
¹ Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.
2 Please note that this is a forecast only, based upon Cooper Investors’ current views and assumptions, and is not guaranteed to occur. Any value latency forecast may differ materially from the results ultimately achieved.
Brunswick Fund Insights: The Soul Patts Story
Soul Patts is a company long held in the Brunswick Fund, a business with many cultural and philosophical similarities to Cooper Investors. The Soul Patts platform, now spanning a diverse portfolio of six businesses, has focused on steady growth through the cycle, patient capital allocation, and a history of dividend consistency.
This video case study provides an excerpt of the interview at the CI Brunswick Fund update event and shares insight into this iconic Australian business, now listed on the ASX for over 120 years.
In addition to the recently distributed September Quarterly Report, we have recorded an update with Geoff Di Felice and Marcus Guzzardi, Co-Portfolio Managers of the Cooper Investors Global Equities Fund.
The update provides details on the fund’s recent performance, changes to portfolio holdings and a deeper dive into a new investment for the Fund, TKO Group Holdings Inc (TKO). TKO is a sports and entertainment company which owns the two premier combat sports assets, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc (WWE).
Marcus and Geoff explore a little history of the company, the recent merger of the two businesses and the huge opportunities for monetisation of the WWE. The management team are highly focussed on optimising the revenues of live events, sponsorships and media rights, and thereby extracting the risk-adjusted value latency that the assets hold – a key tenet of the CI investment process.
Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul
Each year we provide a book to our investors with the important lessons we have drawn from it and its linkage to our process.
“Over the past 10 years, in order to achieve the growth, development and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have led to the watering down of the Starbucks Experience, and what some might call the commodisation of our brand.
Many of these decisions were probably right at the time, and on their own merit would not have created the dilution of the experience; but in this case, the sum is much greater and, unfortunately, much more damaging than the individual pieces.”
Hendrik Bessembinder studied shareholder wealth creation of US companies from 1950 to 2020. He observed the most successful group (the top 100 wealth creators) experienced material share price drawdowns during the decade they were most successful – the average drawdown was 32.5%. That is, on their way to creating great wealth, they suffered a great fall.
We describe these falls as Hubris-to-Humility cycles: success can lead “people [to] become arrogant, regarding success virtually as an entitlement, and they lose sight of the true underlying factors that created success in the first place”.
Whilst these events can be painful the humility phase can be a powerful de-risking event for investors. A crisis can provide the focus and urgency needed for businesses to correct mistakes and refocus on the core, which reduces operational risk. And so, in the right circumstances, the risk-adjusted value of the business can be rising at a time when disgruntled investors are selling and the share price is falling.
Starbucks (SBUX) experienced a Hubris-to-Humility cycle in the late noughties. Starbucks had for most of its history enjoyed incredible success. But that success bred hubris, they drifted away from their core and diluted their customer proposition. Then the GFC hit. Starbucks share price declined by 77%.
Onward is the story of Starbucks’ Hubris-to-Humility cycle during this period and Howard Schultz’s leadership.
These are our lessons from the book.
Provide a positive and optimistic vision of the future: a humility cycle creates fear and anxiety for the future – will the company survive? Will I still have a job? Howard recognised this and did not “cast blame for the mistakes” and sought to provide a positive vision for the future. Howard also struck an important balance with the past – he recognised the important lessons of Starbucks’ history but was not nostalgic, recognising they must reinvent themselves to succeed.
Talent refresh: A fellow CEO told Howard that “most of your top leaders will be gone or new within a year”. The critical phase of a turnaround requires people that are “all-in”. Many of the people in senior leadership will be part of the “complacent class” unable to make this switch. Howard was willing to make the hard decisions and remove “good people” who had the wrong culture and drive.
There are no silver bullets: “I could not help but hope that there just might be one thing that would miraculously solve all our problems”. Howard continually sought a “silver bullet”, these included new drink categories and technology innovations. None of these delivered the expected outcomes. But they did divert focus and their failure partially undermined Howard’s leadership. Howard finally concluded success would only be achieved by focusing, relentlessly on the core.
Focus on re-energising the customer proposition, not short-term financial metrics: Schultz recounts some advice he was offered “if you reduce the quality just 5 percent, no one would know, and that’s a few million dollars right there”. But Schultz remarks “at these recommendations and others, I did not blink”. He focused on the core drivers of long-term value – “One cup. One customer. One partner. One experience at a time. We had to get back to what mattered most”.
There will be low-hanging fruit to improve the operations: “growth and success can cover up a lot of mistakes”. Starbucks’ success had allowed inefficient practices to creep in and fester, there was never any serious management focus on cutting them out. This included outdated technology, haphazard inventory management, dirty stores, excess wastage and poor labour scheduling. But the humility cycle forced a first-principle review of operations with the urgency to change.
Focus on customer observations: there was so much negativity toward Starbucks from journalists and Wall Street and recent financial performance was bleak. Many questioned the viability of the model. But beneath this negativity there were strong signals available to the observational investor. Starbucks shuttered hundreds of poor performing stores – this led to a huge outpouring from effected customers (including “Save Our Starbucks”). This highlighted the strong customer proposition and unique place Starbucks served in communities i.e. would a fast-food restaurant elicit a similar response?
Source: Factset, Cooper Investors Analysis
Starbucks’ share price increased by 13.5x in the proceeding 8 years.
Today Starbucks is once again suffering a Hubris-to-Humility cycle. Whilst the circumstances and drivers are different compared to the Onward era, the above lessons are enduring.
Recommended by
Marcus Guzzardi & Geoffrey Di Felice
Allan Goldstein Portfolio Manager – Family & Founder Fund
The Art of Compounding
Mitchell Rales, one of the brothers who founded, ran and stewarded Danaher over the last 40 years appeared on a recent podcast, ‘The Art of Investing’. Mitch has rarely spoken publicly and his reflection on Danaher and business are a must listen to.
His episode, titled ‘The Art of Compounding’, is a podcast worth sharing, as Danaher was the inspiration for the Cooper Investors Family & Founder Fund portfolio.
“It all starts with creating a purpose statement, a set of core values, a vision statement of what you stand for and a BHAG or big hairy audacious goal, which is what you really aspire to over a 20- to 30-year period of time….
We also think institutions of greatness aren’t, once again, built quickly. You can’t be great quickly. Great takes time and compounding. So, this journey of 30 years to get to that point is what we’re really after, and that’s the ‘BHAG’ that we want. We want to create something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”
Mitch Rales, The Art of Compounding April 2024
The Rales Brothers in 1988 (The Washington Post)
Skin and Soul in the Game
The Cooper Investors (“CI”) Family and Founder Fund (“F&F Fund”) started as a conversation in 2014 in the back of a taxi between Peter Cooper, CI Founder & CIO, and F&F Portfolio Manager Allan Goldstein. They were on a research trip for the CI Global Equities Fund, and the conversation started following a factory visit to one of Danaher’s operations in the outer suburbs of Illinois, a stock owned since 2010. The visit highlighted the business quality, management capabilities and value latency for shareholders. The Danaher business system was real. The conviction levels in the stock were high and the idea of a dedicated portfolio of only these rare, listed, founder and family businesses first took hold. Albeit it was not for another five years of deep research until the F&F portfolio was established.
Academic research has tried to cover the edge, long-term orientation and statistical outperformance of family and founder-led businesses, but it’s only when you have the opportunity to meet these exceptional business leaders that you really understand the brilliance and inherent sustainability of the business. The story of Danaher is one which resonates with us because it talks directly to our CI approach of both ‘soul and skin in the game’.
Average Insider Ownership Comparison
We consider this a term which encapsulates the unique passion and energy brought to Family and Founder-led businesses. Over our 23-year journey as CI, and many more years as individual investors, our observations led us to establish and personally seed the F&F in 2019. In the 10 years prior to starting the Fund, a number of top contributors to CI’s global investing performance included emerging founder or family businesses such as Constellation Software, Heico, Techtronic, Colliers, in addition to Danaher.
These companies were bought in the $2-10bn market cap range where they had sufficient scale and track record but still a long runway of value creation, and contributed significantly to the 14% pa returns and 2% alpha pa of the Fund between 2010 and 2020.
After decades of investment observation which has taken us all over the world (around 1,000 individual company visits a year over the past 20 years), it had become apparent to us that there was a captive opportunity to invest in listed founder and family businesses. With an average inside ownership of 25%, the Family & Founder Fund is seeking those businesses with unique levels of skin in the game.
The Danaher Origin Story
“For me, it all starts with does the business have a platform to do something special over the course of time. If we understand that, that’s the case, then the first thing I want to do is, I want to meet the CEO/founder running the business, and I want to really size him or her up.”
Mitch Rales, The Art of Compounding April 2024
Danaher was established by brothers Steven and Mitchell Rales in 1984, evolving from a niche industrial company to a leading healthcare business over its 40 years. Its origins were as discrete and disparate manufacturing businesses, which grew into Danaher Business Systems: a global technology and science sector leader.
Today, Danaher has a portfolio of 15 businesses across biotechnology, diagnostics and life sciences, and more than 65,000 employees around the world. But it still retains its essence with Steven and Mitchell Rales as the stewards of the company culture and strategy, combining a unique blend of commercial excellence and a savvy acquisition focus.
When talking about company culture recently, Mitch Rales speaks to the importance of a mindset of continuous improvement and long-term thinking; and how important this is to Danaher and the company’s DNA. These cultural indicators have been a significant feature of why CI has been a longstanding supporter of Danaher and continues to invest to this day, with a strong alignment between the F&F fund mandate and the Danaher approach.
“We started this imagination journey…
And it basically went along the lines of, we want to find passionate and dedicated founders who can give you a long duration runway, think 20 to 30 years, where you invest in businesses that have the chance to create a 50 to 100x outcome over those 20 to 30 years and stay the course.”
Mitch Rales, The Art of Compounding April 2024
The Danaher Business System and Values
CI invested in Danaher in 2010 – almost 15 years ago. At that time, Danaher was a $25bn market cap company (having listed in 1979 and the brothers taking control in 1984). The company had begun to show signs of pivoting from a niche industrial company into one focused on the manufacture of scientific and technical instruments, under the ‘crown jewel’ platform of the Danaher Business Systems: guidelines for identifying and implementing continuous improvement.
The price at which CI bought in was $27 (adjusting for spin offs) in mid-2010. Early indications were strong, however in 2011, the stock underperformed by 20%. Nearly 1.5 years into the investment, the stock had not generated any return or outperformance.
Our focus was on the strong underlying fundamentals and the vision for the business and growth that Danaher had outlined, and we knew we were investing for the journey – CI looks to find underappreciated sources of value. Supported by the thesis, Danaher then began a steady growth trajectory that saw the stock price double by 2015 from CI’s original buy-in price five years previous. From here, the steady trajectory became a significant performance run, as more recurring, higher margin business came through and re-ratings followed superior earnings per share (EPS) growth.
Since our original investment, Danaher has been a ‘ten-bagger’¹ for CI, a stock entered into at $27 which is now valued at $255 USD, plus another ~$15 of dividends distributed along the journey. As of March 2024, the market cap of Danaher Corp (NYSE: DHR) is $190 billion, even after accounting for major spin offs (Danaher’s market cap is now bigger than that of BHP, the ASXs largest stock).
Whilst the financial return and the fruition of our investment thesis is welcome, it is the underlying cultural alignment between CI and Danaher that sees us waking up every day thinking about who the next Danaher is to add to the F&F Fund portfolio.
¹ A ‘Ten-Bagger’ is a colloquial term coined by legendary fund manager Peter Lynch in his book ‘One Up on Wall Street.’ It refers to a stock which has appreciated in value ten-times (or more) from its original purchase price.
Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance Source: Factset
Making Growth Happen: M&A and a Culture as Platform
The incredible growth was made possible through an organic strategy, but M&A was also a big value creation driver alongside the core business. M&A made the business ‘better’ whilst generating attractive returns. We regularly visited Danaher portfolio businesses and spoke to company executives and saw this evolution taking shape – as bolt-ons and new platforms came online, Danaher also divested its industrial and dental businesses to become a more focused healthcare business. The pace at which they were able to implement their vision was impressive, again underpinned by their culture of continuous improvement.
A watershed moment for our team was that on the ground tour of Videojet in 2014. Videojet provides marking and coding for in line printing i.e. the use by date or product code for a soft-drink can. Videojet was a business acquired by Danaher in 2002, which became the foundation for Danaher’s Product Identification Platform. The site tour brought to life Danaher’s ability to identify quality companies and add value to businesses.
Intensely private, the brothers Mitchell and Stephen do not engage in public and shareholder events nor accept speaking engagements. An external CEO was appointed very early on in the Danaher journey, with the brothers transitioning to ‘chief stewards’ of the business.
As part of the ‘Art of Investing’ podcast, Mitch reflected on this journey:
“The story starts with the fact that I think Steve and I understood what we didn’t know. We were not meant to be great operators…. I think we understood that we really needed to professionalise the business. We could create long-term vision and strategy and how to properly allocate capital. We were very good at those type of things.
But the details of what you need to do to run a business day to day is a heavy lift. As a CEO of a publicly traded company, it really requires you to be in 24/7, 365 days a year. And we’re prepared to commit the time and the energy, but the details were something that really needed to be paid attention to.”
Steven and Mitchell Rales Source: Getty Images
The first CEO was George Sherman who was appointed in 1990. Mitch says: “George gave us a great 10-year run. He was an exceptional CEO. He professionalised the business. He brought processes in. He helped us roll out the Danaher business system in meaningful ways that were really important to becoming the culture of the organization, our DNA.”
Through this strong culture, Danaher has successfully navigated several CEO successions over its history, and to this day Steven and Mitchell hold Executive Chairman roles at Danaher.
Attributing Success
In our years observing Danaher, speaking with their executives, and relentlessly researching their stock we consider that there are three key attributes to Danaher’s success:
Operational Excellence/Continuous ImprovementThis is a way of life at Danaher. They serve their customers well, expand their margins, generate strong cash flows, and reinvest in the business – it is a virtuous cycle. The level of talent in their leadership positions is outstanding, but they also ‘grow their own’ with strong talent building and identification programmes.
Capital DeploymentFrom the very early days, the majority of free cash flow at Danaher has gone into acquisitions. The team have generated attractive returns by buying quality businesses that have a unique adjacency to the Danaher Business System.
Building a Better BusinessThe vision from the Rales brothers has been strong from day one, and the evolution from a niche industrial company to a leading healthcare business came through organic growth, M&A, and also strategic divestment.
The next Frontier of Danaher and F&F
“I guess I’m just a business builder rather than a business seller. And if we can find those shots on goal that give us a percent recreating something special, I think the returns will take care of themselves over time.”
Mitch Rales, The Art of Compounding April 2024
Today F&F is relentlessly focused on researching and finding underappreciated value in founder-led businesses, sitting alongside the enduring family company in a single portfolio. We consider that several platforms we currently have in the portfolio support this thesis and have the potential to grow – a combination of operational excellence, capital deployment, and getting better (not just bigger).
My personal experience, growing up in a small family business, and passion as an investor drives the continued search for quality businesses to add to the Family & Founder Fund.
Cooper Investors Brunswick Fund Review – July 2024
In July 2024, Cooper Investors celebrated the 20th Anniversary of The Brunswick Fund.
View more information about the Cooper Investors Brunswick Fund including the latest performance and reporting.
We Need to Talk: A Memoir About Wealth
When Jennifer Risher joined Microsoft in 1991, she met her husband, and with him became an extra-lucky beneficiary of the dot-com boom. By their early thirties, they had tens of millions of dollars. Today, there are millions of people like her. Jennifer’s thought-provoking, personal story includes the voices of others in her demographic and explores the hidden impact of wealth on identity, relationships, and sense of place in the world. At a time when income-inequality is a huge problem, our country’s economic system is broken, and money is still a taboo subject even among those closest to us, this engaging, introspective memoir is essential reading: a catalyst for conversation that demystifies wealth and inspires us to connect.
AFR: Let business play a role fixing Australia’s affordable housing crisis
ASX-listed Aspen has found novel ways to combat the cost inflation plaguing the sector. It’s time to scale via M&A and create sustainable operators.
By Justin O’Brien
Source: Financial Review
May 30, 2024
Australia has an abundance of space. However, most of us want to live close to a few large cities. It is this simple fact that has created significant wealth for those lucky enough to own property. For others, the Australian dream has become unattainable.
Despite all the rhetoric, governments can’t and won’t be the panacea for our housing affordability crisis. Like all complex problems, we need multi-faceted solutions, and the corporate sector has an important role to play.
Housing affordability is at its worst level in 20 years and is expected to decline further. Supply, as measured by new housing starts, is at cyclical lows. However, demand via migration remains high (for now) and demographic trends continue to shift the type of housing needed. This has led to very low vacancy rates for rentals with the likelihood that rents will trend higher, further stoking the inflation fire.
In a recent presentation to investors, John Carter and David Dixon, who are the joint chief executives of Aspen, a developer and operator of affordable housing, put numbers to the problem. They highlighted there were more than 4 million households with an annual income of less than $90,000 requiring affordable housing, which they defined as under $400,000 to buy or less than $400 per week to rent.
However, building accommodation that meets these criteria is extremely challenging given the high cost of land, building materials and the labour needed to construct – let alone taxes, which are a very high proportion of the cost of new builds.
Each of these costs has risen substantially since the onset of COVID-19 and remains stubbornly high. Given the many and complex reasons underpinning this inflation, it is difficult to see them falling soon. Perhaps governments will once again lean on subsidies to offset these high costs. But for how long should taxpayers bear the brunt?
Our view is clever corporates, operating under a profit motive, are one solution to the problem. Aspen has deployed some novel approaches that government can only dream of using, such as buying sites from receivers, or acquiring difficult assets that require repositioning or capital spend to bring them up to scratch.
In an interesting contrast to recent government announcements to demolish and rebuild large apartment buildings in Sydney and Melbourne, Carter and Dixon highlighted the portfolio they purchased in Perth in 2019. Aspen paid $52 million at the time for 17 properties, many with very high vacancy rates. Their most recent refurbishment within this portfolio was the Maylands apartment complex, near the Perth CBD. Aspen paid just $58,000 for each apartment, which at acquisition had just 38 per cent occupancy. By spending $131,000 on average, on both the apartments and surrounding area, Aspen has significantly improved the units’ “liveability”, which has driven occupancy to 100 per cent with the University of Western Australia now an anchor tenant.
For investors, this renovation has generated a circa 50 per cent return on investment.
Had Aspen simply knocked down Maylands and rebuilt, it might have taken five to 10 years to obtain planning permits and complete construction. Not to mention the vast waste of concrete, steel and other energy-intensive materials, or the eventual high rental cost, well outside the affordable level, needed to earn an adequate return.
But novel approaches, while necessary, are still not sufficient. To be a low-cost service provider, it is essential to have a low-cost position yourself.
That doesn’t just mean providing a service efficiently. Scale is often a vital factor in achieving a low-cost position as it dictates a “structural” level of costs. For housing operators and developers, this includes overhead costs like marketing, operations and administration where bigger translates to lower overhead costs per unit.
For rental providers, the corporate operator owns the bricks and mortar, which is a capital-intensive game. Being listed has an advantage in sourcing capital. But listed companies also benefit from scale. Bigger stocks often enjoy a lower cost of capital – a fact the real estate investment trusts have taken advantage of for many years.
Given the scale benefits of both operating costs and capital costs to the sector, mergers and acquisitions should be encouraged. Scale achieved via M&A will ultimately lead to better outcomes for consumers and assist in creating long-term sustainable operators.
This is one of the reasons we supported the proposal to merge Aspen with the sub-scale operator Eureka. We were substantial shareholders in both companies until we converted our Eureka shares to Aspen shares. The logic for creating a more scalable business is obvious. Despite the deal’s rejection by Eureka shareholders, Aspen remains well-placed to build on its position, while also delivering value for Aspen shareholders.
To us, this is the essence of a sustainable operator and is at the heart of our investment philosophy which seeks good-quality companies, run by management teams/cultures that have a proprietorial or ownership mindset, with the opportunity to create value longer-term in industries with tailwinds.
Justin O’Brien is a portfolio manager at Cooper Investor.
Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us about the Business of Life
When the going gets tough, the tough start changing. Difficult times call for different solutions. In his global bestseller, Legacy, James Kerr goes deep into the heart of the world’s most successful team, the New Zealand All Blacks, to help understand what it takes to bounce back from adversity and still reach the top.
