India’s bankruptcy resolution professionals are under siege
An important aspect of Marcellus’ investment philosophy is avoiding companies with dodgy accounting and we see accounting quality as a proxy for promoter integrity. This article reinforces the importance of that. If bankruptcy professionals appointed by the courts to turnaround defaulting companies and recover lender’s interests can be subject to this treatment, what hope in […]
Here’s 10,000 Hours. Don’t Spend It All in One Place.
Inspired by David Epstein’s outstanding book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in in a Specialized World”, last year Saurabh Mukherjea of Marcellus co-authored with Anupam Gupta “The Victory Project: Six Steps to Peak Potential”. Saurabh’s book made the point that to succeed in complex working environments all of us need to build a range of skills […]
The spectacular implosion of Neil Woodford, Britain’s superstar fund manager
Around twenty years ago when some of us in Marcellus were young brokers in the stockmarket in London, a visit to Invesco Perpetual’s campus just outside London in the picturesque town of Henley was like a visit to the Vatican. Inside the campus presided the then ascendant superstar of British fund management, Neil Woodford. Once […]
Spotlighting Amrutanjan Healthcare
This month we place the spotlight on Amrutanjan Healthcare, the second largest player in the Indian head pain balm category. Over the last decade, Amrutanjan has successfully mitigated the growth challenges in its mature core head pain balm category through new products, targeting the adjacencies (body pain, congestion) and foray into categories like sanitary napkins […]
The Science Behind Portfolio Concentration
Diversification in an equity portfolio reduces stock-specific risk but excessive diversification reduces returns, substantially more than it reduces risk. Marcellus’ proprietary framework for arriving at the number stocks in a portfolio is based on the most critical driver of portfolio concentration, namely, the “gradient” of the characteristics that the fund manager seeks within her coverage […]
How Portfolio Management Services in India Rediscovered its Mojo
Positive regulatory intervention and the ‘financialisation’ of savings in India has galvanised the Portfolio Management Services (PMS) industry in India. Once seen as a niche corner of the asset management sector, the PMS sector industry is increasingly at the vanguard of dynamic innovation in the Indian asset management sector. The year was 2017 and the […]
Be More Realistic About the Time You Have
There’s plenty of self-help material on productivity hacks and how to make the most of our time. Despite everything, many of us find ourselves falling short of time to complete the projects that we have committed to or eating into our leisure time to fulfil the commitment. This piece in the HBR says we should […]
How one of world’s greatest hidden fortunes was wiped out in days
Whilst the markets have been concerned about inflationary risks and therefore interest rate increases stalling the rally, we have been reminded this week of other ways low interest rates can create systemic risks – excessive leverage. This piece in Bloomberg talks about Archegos Capital Management, a US based hedge fund/family office which defaulted on margin […]
Are You Dreaming Too Big?
Setting ourselves goals to pursue, whether personal or professional, helps give direction to our efforts. But not all goals are helpful, says Arthur Brooks in this piece for The Atlantic. He says we shouldn’t be subjecting our sense of achievement to concentration risk by having one ambitious lifelong goal. We should rather set ourselves a […]
5 things you should know about variants
Sample studies of the recent covid surge in India points to several variants of the virus including a localised double mutant. Studies elsewhere such as France and the Czech Republic too have shown a large percentage to be driven by the highly transmissible UK variant. And there are the South African and Brazilian variants which […]
“Play Bigger: The How and Why of Category Design” – An Interview with Christopher Lochhead
“Play Bigger” is both the name of a book published five years ago and the name of a consultancy firm in Silicon Valley (whose founders wrote the book). We came across the book a month ago and found it be a fascinating read not least because it helped us understand why, for example, Cathy Wood’s […]
Transforming for Growth: An Evidence-Based Guide
In the aftermath of Covid-19 we have been pleasantly surprised to see that most of our investee companies have accelerated their earnings growth to 25%+ (i.e. significantly faster than pre-Covid level) and our fund managers have published newsletters seeking to rationalise this (see here and here). Now we highlight a rigorous study from BCG which drills into why […]
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