Jensen Investment Management

Jensen Investment

Jensen Investment Management is an employee-owned investment firm founded by Val Jensen in 1988 and based in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Jensen came to the business as a career broker, having earlier run the Jensen Securities Company and served as president of Charter Investment Group. He started the firm in part out of frustration with the short-term focus and volatility of the equities markets, building a shop devoted to a quieter, longer-horizon style of investing that he called "quality investing." The firm has stayed independent and wholly owned by its employees since the founding. Today it is led by Rob McIver, a managing director and president who joined in 2004, working alongside a small collaborative team of portfolio managers and business analysts. The investing approach is anchored in a screening rule the firm calls its "Jensen Quality Universe": to earn a place, a company must have produced a return on equity of at least 15 percent in each of the past ten consecutive years. From that pool the team picks businesses with enduring competitive advantages and strong free cash flow, using bottom-up fundamental research and discounted cash flow analysis, then holds them for the long term rather than pushing for change or trading around short moves. The philosophy, as the firm describes it, is to protect capital in rough markets while participating in rising ones—looking for exceptional businesses and giving them time to compound.