January 2010
In this piece we provide our perspective on the merits of investing in companies where the founding family has a significant ownership stake. Founders and their families often have built their businesses with good old fashioned blood, sweat and tears. As a result of this, they tend to invest and spend company money like it is their own, focusing on the growth of their personal balance sheet and not the income statement. Importantly, such firms typically have a longer-term outlook which allows for better business investment decisions.
October 2009
Leading up to the financial crisis of 2007-2009, market participants had a great deal of confidence in the credit ratings agencies and their credit ratings. The October 2009 Research Perspective gives the reader an overview of how the credit ratings agencies operate. It also gives the reader EBS’s take on the importance of credit ratings in investment analysis.
March 2009
Compensation of the top executives of many public companies has come under intense public scrutiny in the recent months due to many of these companies generating enormous losses while also laying off employees. In the March 2009 Research Perspective, we provide a brief history of how executive compensation has evolved. We then go on to describe the key guidelines that we believe firms’ boards of directors should follow to improve the way executives are compensated.
November 2008
Year-to-date, 2008 has been one of the most painful years for stock market investors in the past 180 years. In the November 2008 Research Perspective, we touch on a number of reasons why, based on wide variety of data, the stock market appears attractive. Valuations are the lowest they have been in the better part of two decades; stocks have gone nowhere in the last ten years; and when Warren Buffett writes on the stock market, it is worth paying attention.
September 2008
September 2008 Research Perspective: Why It Has Paid to Weather Bear Markets and Turbulent Times