Finance Overview: Chris Beaven

Hello! My name is Chris Beaven. Originally from the South coast of the UK, I’ve been living in London since university. In the coming months, my family and I will relocate to the US, specifically California. With two young children and a labradoodle, family time takes priority outside of work. Whether it be exploring Disney, learning to surf, or hiking the excellent CA trails, we are super excited for our adventure West.

In the US I will be working for WCM Investment Management, investing in international equities. However I didn't always know that I wanted to be an investor. Growing up I was deeply curious, in particular about what made people successful across different fields (such as business and sports), but also entrepreneurial. Various unsuccessful business ventures included buying/selling personal vehicle number plates, an events company, as well as the idea to start an early form of what we might today consider a platform business - connecting consumers who wanted their washing done, with the fragmented industry of small, local dry cleaners. In retrospect, perhaps it was a better idea than I initially thought!

Nevertheless, curiosity, drive, and a commercial mindset were likely what landed me my first experience in finance. Initially a 2-week spring internship at Goldman Sachs (GS) in their equity research department, I was captivated by the learning opportunity, fast-paced environment, quality of the people around me, as well as the notion of buying/selling stocks to generate a profit.  

Having managed to secure a return invitation for a summer internship the following year, I ultimately was offered a full-time job out of university and was delighted to join GS. As a sell-side research analyst, my role was to perform fundamental analysis on a number of stocks that we covered across a range of industries and sectors. A sell-side analyst is someone that works in a bank where research, ideas, as well as other financial services, are ‘sold’ to clients, i.e. qualified or institutional investors. Those investors – the buy-side - ‘buy’ the research and services, with the mandate to invest on behalf of their clients. Studying industry dynamics, company strategy, and growth/profit potential, I learned how to build financial models to forecast and estimate the intrinsic value of a company, and ultimately highlight to clients' opportunities where companies were undervalued, and they should buy the shares. A typical day would involve lots of reading, speaking to company management teams about their most recent results or strategy updates (for example CEO or CFO), updating company financial models, writing my latest opinions on the business, as well as sharing these with clients. Over time I realized that my favorite parts of job centred on learning about companies across a range of industries (i.e. a generalist), spotting patterns to help me form investment hypotheses, and then investing real capital.  

After a few years at Goldman, I was fortunate enough to get offered a job to do this at Wellington Management - a large buy-side asset manager, based in their London office. While I wouldn’t claim I’d ’fallen in love’ with investing at Goldman, I certainly did at Wellington. Managing c.$1 trillion of client capital, the firm has every type of investment strategy you might conceive. Indeed, I once referred to it as being a kid in a candy story for someone wanting to learn the investment management business. For 7 years I was like a sponge, learning from colleagues close and far - trying to capture everything I could. Most directly, I helped manage a European Small Cap equity fund, which invested in niche companies in Europe with attractive growth and profitability run by excellent management teams. With the privilege of regular travel to spend time with management teams at their HQ across Europe, it was a huge amount of fun, and highly rewarding.  

The decision to join Hosking Partners (HP) was a continuation of my investing journey. A career in investing is all about a commitment to learning. Whether it be about companies, industries, or markets. As such, when the opportunity to join a global investment boutique based in London with a distinct reputation for its unique investment approach, impressive long-term track record, and more ‘unconstrained’ investment mandate (in terms of geography, sector and style of investing), I jumped at the chance to join HP. There is a saying in investing that in order to generate a different (i.e. better) performance than others, you have to act differently. In this regard Hosking Partners was an opportunity for me to expand my investing experience meaningfully.  

The chance to work at WCM was an opportunity to even further align my investing passions in a unique institution with incredible people. WCM’s firm values are gratitude, fun, and serve others; while our research team values are think different, get better. Nestled off the beaten track in Laguna Beach, California, the firm has done an incredible job of demonstrating investment philosophy adaptability, culture as a competitive advantage (both internally and identifying in investee companies), and creating a high-trust environment in which to do your best work. Investing is not an easy business – data suggests that >50% of money managers underperform, and so working in a highly-collaborative and innovative environment is an incredible way to stack the odds of success for clients in your favour.  

Investing is a dynamic field well-suited to inherently curious, driven, entrepreneurial individuals. As a career it offers the potential for continuous learning (about businesses, industries, cultures...), the chance to engage with successful executives (c-suite management teams and other investors alike), opportunities to travel the world, as well as the prospect of ‘testing’ your ideas against the market, all in the pursuit of investment performance for clients. It is stimulating and rewarding. Above all, for someone who is passionate about such a vocation, there is one deep reality: to borrow the name from one of my favourite books on infamous Canadian investor, Peter Cundill... There’s always something to do!