Marathon Asset Management

Marathon invests through a capital cycle framework that focuses on the supply side of industries rather than demand forecasting. The approach, developed by the firm's founders and documented in the book *Capital Returns*, seeks to identify sectors where capital is exiting — leading to improved competitive dynamics and rising returns — and avoid sectors where capital inflows are compressing profitability. Portfolio managers typically hold 10 to 25 names and expect to own positions for three to five years, or the duration of a full capital cycle.

Jeremy Hosking, Neil Ostrer and William Arah founded Marathon in 1986 after working together at GT Management. Hosking and Ostrer, along with later-generation portfolio managers such as Nick Longhurst and Charles Carter, shaped the firm's investment culture over subsequent decades. The founders began stepping back from day-to-day portfolio management in the late 2010s, transitioning responsibilities to senior investment professionals who had spent most of their careers at the firm.

Portfolios are built bottom-up by sector specialists, each running a concentrated book of roughly 10 to 25 names. Position sizing is driven by conviction in the capital cycle thesis rather than by an index's sector or country weight. The firm runs both global and regional mandates. Marathon has historically soft-closed or hard-closed strategies when approaching internal capacity limits to protect the concentration and investment horizon of the process.

Marathon is overwhelmingly known as a long-only global equity manager, though its capital cycle framework could theoretically apply to other asset classes. The firm's primary strategies are global and regional equity portfolios offered to institutional investors and, via a UCITS fund, to a broader allocator base. Public record does not indicate significant expansion into fixed income, private equity or alternative asset classes.

The capital cycle framework was developed internally by Marathon's founders and investment team over decades of applying the same analytical lens to equity markets. Marathon investment strategist Edward Chancellor later edited the firm's internal strategy letters into the book *Capital Returns* (published 2015), which brought the framework to a wider audience. While the concept of supply-side capital cycles is not proprietary, Marathon's specific application — running concentrated, unconstrained portfolios through the full cycle — is the firm's defining characteristic.

Marathon manages both commingled funds and segregated mandates for institutional clients. The firm's strategies are available in multiple vehicles, including an Irish-domiciled UCITS fund. Marathon's institutional client base has historically included pension funds, endowments and sovereign wealth funds, though the firm does not publicly disclose its full client list.

Marathon publishes lengthy quarterly letters that function more as capital cycle case studies than traditional performance commentary. These letters teach the investment framework through detailed analysis of specific industries and companies, explaining how competitive dynamics evolve when capital enters or exits a sector. The practice serves both as investor education and as a mechanism for attracting allocators who share the firm's long-horizon, supply-side orientation.