Twenty-eight years
How we invest, and what we publish.
Halbrook buys listed securities and holds them for years. It charges one fee, unchanged since 2015. It publishes its holdings and its results so a client can check both against a statement.
Twenty-eight
Years running the same three mandates
8%
Global Equity turnover, year to 31 March 2026
0.45%
Top management fee, unchanged since 2015
The securities we buy
Listed companies in developed markets, investment-grade and selected high-yield bonds, and gilts for ballast. Nothing unlisted, and nothing we cannot price from a screen on any working day. At 31 March 2026 Global Equity held twelve companies, Fixed Income and Credit 118 bonds from 71 issuers, and Multi-Asset 84 securities.
We buy a company when we expect to own it for ten years and a bond when we are content to hold it to maturity. The test is whether the business will still be earning in 2036, and whether we would be glad to own it then at that price.
Holding period and turnover
Global Equity turned over 8% of the portfolio in the year to 31 March 2026, all of it trimming and adding to existing holdings. No company was sold. The median holding has been owned for eleven years. Fixed Income and Credit holds most bonds to maturity. Multi-Asset is rebalanced in April and October and left alone between those dates.
Low turnover is a cost decision before it is a philosophy. Every trade pays a spread, and on UK shares it pays stamp duty. A portfolio that trades once a decade pays those once a decade.
The fee
One annual management fee, taken quarterly in arrears on the value of the portfolio. Lower rates apply above GBP 50m. No performance fee and no entry or exit charge. Dealing and custody costs are passed through at cost.
Mandate
Annual fee
Global Equity
0.45%
Fixed Income and Credit
0.25%
Multi-Asset
0.40%
These rates were set in 2015 and have not changed. Our costs have not moved enough to justify moving them, and a fee that changes often is one a client cannot plan around. Should the rates ever change, every client will have twelve months’ written notice.
Exclusions
Each line below is written into the mandate documents. Each has cost us returns in at least one year. We publish the list because a client should know the limits before the first statement arrives.
We do not borrow. No mandate has used borrowed money since 1998.
We do not sell short.
We do not use derivatives, other than forward contracts to hedge currency in Fixed Income and Credit.
We do not hold unlisted or private assets. If a price cannot be seen on a working day, we do not own it.
We do not lend client securities.
We do not charge performance fees, and we do not accept research paid for by brokers.
We do not take custody of client assets. They sit with the client’s own custodian, in the client’s name.
We do not open a mandate to follow a market. Three were opened in 1998. There have been no others.
What the refusals cost
Holding no unlisted assets kept the firm out of private credit. Clients asked for it in 2021 and again in 2024. We had nothing to offer them and still do not.
Statements and meetings
A statement on the fifth working day of every month, showing every holding and every charge. James Okonkwo has signed each one before it is sent since 2004. A letter from the mandate manager follows each quarter, reporting each trade and the reason for it.
Once a year, a meeting with the manager, at 12 Austin Friars or at the client’s office. The independent verification report on our returns goes to every client each May. The full holdings list is available on any working day; a request received before noon is answered the same day.
If any claim on this site lacks a number and a date, write to us.
We will add them or take it down.
Write to us