RV Capital AG

Robert Vinall

Robert Vinall is a British value investor who runs RV Capital, a small firm based in Kilchberg, Switzerland, that he founded in 2006. He began his finance career at Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 1997, then moved to DG Bank (later DZ Bank), where he became head of telecommunications research, before joining the activist-oriented CDL Principal Investors in Switzerland in 2004. Along the way he met the German entrepreneur Norman Rentrop, who became both his mentor and the financial backer of his first fund. Vinall founded RV Capital in 2006 to advise the Business Owner Fund and manage separate accounts for institutional clients. The fund launched in 2008, two weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed, with seed money from Rentrop — a story Vinall tells often, crediting his mentor for making the whole venture possible. His philosophy is summed up in his own phrase: "investing like an owner in businesses run by an engaged and rational owner with the capital of investors who think like an owner." In practice that means a tightly concentrated portfolio of roughly ten companies held for many years, chosen for durable competitive advantages, engaged management, and businesses built to last a decade or more. He evolved from buying cheap statistical value toward seeking quality companies with strong moats and good owners, and he is candid that the hardest part of the job is temperament, not math. Every January RV Capital hosts a gathering in Engelberg, Switzerland, bringing together its investors, the managers of companies it owns, and fellow fund managers for a few days of shared ideas — a tradition that reflects Vinall's belief that the best investors learn from one another.