Select Equity Group (SEG) is a New York City-based asset manager that was founded in 1990 on the premise that rigorous, independent research and disciplined long-term investing will generate superior returns for its clients. From its origins in the early 1990s as an investor seeking high-quality U.S. small- and mid-cap growth companies, SEG has broadened the scope of its research across the globe and market cap spectrum. SEG now manages over $40 billion in assets across long-only and long/short equity strategies that share a centralized research effort and common investment philosophy focused on owning the highest quality businesses. SEG’s strategies include small-cap, mid-cap, large-cap and all-cap mandates and dedicated U.S., non-U.S. and global portfolios, and its global client base includes endowments, foundations, public and corporate pensions, private banks, family offices and high-net-worth individuals. The firm is employee-owned and is located at 380 Lafayette Street in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan.

 

Reasons for Partnering with BBH

SEG views having thoughtful, long-term-oriented partners as a key competitive advantage. BBH is a best-in-class example, having anchored flagship strategies for the firm. As a partner, BBH is differentiated by its: 

Philosophical alignment: BBH practices what it preaches to external managers, guided by a consistent investment philosophy that does not change as markets fluctuate and macroeconomics fads come and go. BBH is a longtime adherent to the same investing principles practiced at SEG: a focus on high-quality businesses, concentrated portfolios and multiyear time horizons. As a result, BBH affords SEG a unique degree of autonomy and like-minded support – particularly during challenging market environments when more philosophically agnostic capital providers are less resolute. BBH’s understanding of why a strategy is outperforming – and importantly, underperforming – is critical to the team’s willingness to deploy capital into declining markets when SEG views those moments as contrarian buying opportunities.

Capital provision at scale: Rather than hedging its bets across hundreds of partners, BBH brings a uniquely high-conviction approach to manager selection; by investing its stable and growing asset base across its concentrated stable of partners, the firm is therefore able to provide significant capital to individual managers. Leveraging this scale, BBH often serves as either a crucial anchor investor (for newer managers) or fund closer (for more established strategies), in both cases allowing managers to spend less time fundraising and more time conducting research and deploying capital.

Portfolio-level due diligence: BBH is focused on understanding what its partners own and why, often conducting complementary due diligence on individual holdings and engaging in constructive lines of questioning. This stock picker’s skillset and mentality is rare among capital allocators and improves the level of discourse we are able to have regarding our research and portfolio construction. As a result, quarterly and annual meetings feel more like dialogues, not presentations, with BBH acting as a provider of not only capital, but also of additive ideas.