Markel Group

Thomas Gayner

Thomas Gayner runs Markel Group, a specialty insurance holding company based in Richmond, Virginia, whose business of collecting premiums and investing the proceeds has drawn constant comparison to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Born in Virginia, Gayner studied commerce at the University of Virginia's McIntire School, graduating in 1983, spent his early years as a Certified Public Accountant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, then moved to the Richmond brokerage Davenport & Co. The move that defined his career began as an accident of a small analyst's desk. Covering regional stocks at Davenport in 1986, Gayner was assigned to follow Markel in the year it went public. He got to know the family behind it, grew to admire how it thought in decades, and in 1990 left Davenport to set up Markel Gayner Asset Management, the arm charged with investing the insurer's money. He rose to co-CEO in 2016 and sole CEO in January 2023, all the while running Markel's stock portfolio, and today also sits on the boards of Coca-Cola and Graham Holdings. His approach is patience worn as a philosophy. Gayner screens for quality businesses that earn high returns on capital without needing constant reinvestment, are run by managers of talent and integrity, and can profitably reinvest their own earnings — filters he credits to studying Buffett and Charlie Munger, whose work he has absorbed for decades. He holds for the long term, keeps portfolio turnover below 3%, and does not agitate for change, preferring to own good companies and leave them alone. When asked about managers he will not back, he repeats his father's line: "You can't do a good deal with a bad person."

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