Locust Wood Capital Advisers

Samuel H. Jones, the founder, acts as Chief Investment Officer and makes the final call on portfolio composition. Before launching the firm in 2000, he managed a similar concentrated long-equity strategy at Mitchell Hutchins and later ran the equity division at Oppenheimer & Co. William C. Conway Jr., a long-tenured Managing Director, shares research responsibilities; the firm does not employ a committee voting structure but relies on Jones's authority under a concentrated decision-making model.

Locust Wood relies on fundamental, bottom-up research rather than quantitative screens or intermediary-sourced deal flow. The firm's public filings and manager commentaries indicate a preference for owner's-manual analysis: studying regulatory filings, annual reports, and management histories to find large-cap businesses trading at discounts to normalized earnings. The multi-year holding periods reduce the need for rapid idea generation; the firm may add only one or two new positions in a given year.

No. Locust Wood operates as a registered investment adviser managing separately managed accounts, not a commingled hedge fund. Clients own the underlying securities directly, which provides tax-control benefits and avoids the liquidity gate provisions common in fund structures. The firm does not charge hedge-fund-style performance fees, according to its public disclosures; compensation is typically asset-based.

The firm has historically avoided sectors where normalized-earnings analysis is unreliable or where competitive moats erode quickly. This means minimal exposure to pre-profit biotechnology, speculative technology, and highly leveraged growth stories. Portfolio holdings have concentrated in financial services, energy, real estate, and consumer cyclicals — businesses with tangible balance sheets, recurring cash flows, and barriers to entry that the firm's research team can model over full economic cycles.

Public records do not indicate any private equity, venture capital, or direct lending activity. The strategy has been applied exclusively to publicly traded common equities since inception. Institutional allocators considering the firm should not expect co-investment opportunities, pre-IPO allocations, or credit instruments — the mandate has not wavered from long-only, large-cap public equities held in disciplined concentration.

Concentration is the strategy, not an incidental feature. The portfolio holds 15 to 25 names, with top positions sometimes exceeding 10 percent of account assets (per the firm's 2010 Barron's interview). Risk management comes from sector diversification across uncorrelated cyclical industries and from the depth of fundamental research rather than position limits. The firm's defense is that a portfolio of 20 rigorously researched companies is safer than 100 names you do not understand well.

The firm has not published a minimum account size, but its client base has historically comprised family offices, endowments, and institutional allocators comfortable with concentrated equity exposure. The separate-account structure suggests a threshold higher than retail SMA platforms; discussions with the firm would be required to confirm current minimums.