Capital : The Story of Long-Term Investment Excellence

In 1929, the year of the great stock market crash, Jonathan Bell Lovelace headed out to California and founded a tiny financial company–much later renamed The Capital Group Companies. Over the past seventy years, it has developed into one of the world's leading professional investment management organizations. No other investment organization in the world has done so well for so long for so many clients. Over the past 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, and longer, Capital's investment results consistently rank in the Top Quartile. Yet most people know very little about Capital–because of the company's penchant for privacy. In Capital: The Story of Long-Term Investment Excellence, Charles Ellis takes you inside this elite investment firm and shows you the people, practices, concepts, and values that have brought this company consistent success. Unsurprisingly, Capital is where most investment professionals would most like to work and is the firm they would most frequently recommend as long-term investment managers for their family and friends. Capital is also the investment organization senior corporate executives would most like to have owning their company's common stock. Finally, Capital is both the organization most likely to fulfill favorable expectations many years into the future and the least likely to say or acknowledge such prospects, because modesty is so pervasive at Capital, where people are far more interested in what lies ahead than in past achievements. As Jon Lovelace says, "Nothing wilts faster than laurels rested upon." Through interviews with dozens of current and former executives as well as years of in-depth research, Ellis explains the organizational culture and long-term investment strategies that have helped Capital achieve superior investment results and grow globally. You'll learn why Capital excels in the mutual fund business with its American Funds and how it pioneered in discovering investment opportunities in emerging markets. Along the way, you'll also get an up-close-and-personal look at the individuals who built the business from the ground up: Jonathan Bell Lovelace, Jon Lovelace, Coleman Morton, Howard Schow, Jim Fullerton, Ward Bishop, Bill Newton, and many others. While externally, Capital is in the business of managing investments and providing services to investors, internally Capital's main mission is to attract, develop, organize, and motivate those remarkably talented individuals who can work effectively with others to develop and deliver superior investment results and superior services to investors. This book illustrates the many methods Capital uses to secure the best financial professionals and details the flexible company structure that allows these professionals to excel. Capital is one of the elite investment organizations that consistently produce superior long-term investment results. Remarkable as this is, it should come as no surprise. Designed and led for more than seventy years by two remarkable men–Jonathan Bell Lovelace and his son Jon Lovelace–Capital has remained true to its singular focus: long-term investment success.