Waverton Investment Management

Waverton Investment Management

Waverton Investment Management started as J. O. Hambro Investment Management in 1986, established to look after the wealth of the Hambro banking family and a small circle of external clients. Today the firm operates independently, with majority ownership held by management and staff, a structure it moved to in 2014 after a buyout backed by Berkshire Hathaway's sister company. The London headquarters houses investment, operations, and client-facing functions. The investment strategy rests on open-architecture manager selection. Waverton's research analysts cover long-only equities and fixed-income strategies worldwide, plus a growing allocation to alternative assets—including private equity funds, real estate vehicles, infrastructure strategies, and a curated hedge fund roster. The firm runs both segregated and pooled multi-asset products, blending in-house tactical asset allocation with manager appointments that span growth, value, and specialist mandates. Known underlying positions have included funds managed by firms such as Findlay Park Partners and Fundsmith, as well as direct property holdings for certain client portfolios. Waverton's geographic footprint concentrates on European and North American exposures, with selective emerging-market fund allocations. Across the business, the firm manages assets for high-net-worth individuals, family offices, trusts, pension schemes, and charities. A dedicated charities team runs a large book of endowment-style portfolios, while the private client division provides both advisory and discretionary services. In April 2024, Waverton launched the Waverton Sterling Bond Fund, bringing fixed-income management in-house rather than through third-party managers—a signal of internal capability build-out (per Investment Week, April 2024). The manager research and asset allocation team numbers fourteen professionals, feeding a central investment committee chaired by the CIO. Waverton's structural differentiator is its conversion from a proprietary family-office origin into a widely held employee-owned manager of managers with a transparent fee model. Unlike a pure OCIO or multi-family office, the firm operates as an investment manager regulated by the FCA, maintaining institutional-grade governance and bespoke portfolio construction for each underlying client. That architecture—originally built to preserve Hambro family wealth—now governs mandates for institutions that require the same separation of advice and product.