Egerton Capital

John Armitage

John Armitage is the co-founder and chief investment officer of Egerton Capital, the London-based firm he set up in 1994 with William Bollinger. Educated at Eton and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took a Modern History degree in 1981, Armitage joined Morgan Grenfell Asset Management the same year, became a director in 1991, and ran the Morgan Grenfell European Growth Trust from its 1988 launch until he left to start his own business. Egerton belongs to the "Tiger Cub" lineage of firms shaped by Julian Robertson's investment DNA, and the founding story is the retellable one: Bollinger had trained under Robertson at Tiger Management, while Armitage brought a decade of European stock-picking, and the two built their own house from scratch. Armitage invests bottom-up, researching individual businesses through site visits and direct contact rather than trying to forecast the macroeconomy. He hunts for quality growth companies with strong earnings, sound balance sheets and honest management, then holds a deliberately concentrated portfolio of high-conviction positions over the long term rather than diversifying broadly or trading frequently. Founded in 1994, Egerton has run global equity long/short and long-only strategies ever since, making it one of Europe's longest-running and most durable independent hedge-fund managers — an endurance record that remains the firm's signature.