Akre Capital Management

Chuck Akre

Chuck Akre is an American investor who founded Akre Capital Management in 1989 after 21 years in the securities business. He came to the field by an unlikely route: he started college as a pre-med student before switching to English literature, graduating from American University in 1968 with no formal training in finance. His career was shaped by two influences he cites openly — Warren Buffett and Thomas Phelps' 1972 book "100 to 1 in the Stock Market," which convinced him of the power of letting great businesses compound. That idea runs through everything he does today. He launched his firm in Middleburg, Virginia, after years at the Washington firm Johnston, Lemon & Co., where he rose to run its asset management arm. From 1993 to 2000 his firm operated under Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., where he managed the FBR Focus Fund. In 2009 he broke away to start fresh, launching the Akre Focus Fund on his own. He describes his approach with a "three-legged stool": a business with a durable competitive advantage, management worth trusting with capital, and strong opportunities to reinvest its own earnings. He calls such companies "compounding machines" and holds them for the long run, running a concentrated portfolio built around his highest-conviction ideas rather than prodding managers to change course.