Gardner Russo & Quinn

Thomas Russo

Thomas A. Russo runs Gardner Russo & Quinn, a value-investment firm based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that he joined as a partner in 1989 and has led as managing member since 2014. Russo holds a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth (1977) and joint law and business degrees from Stanford (1984). Before joining the firm, he spent the late 1980s working on the Sequoia Fund at Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb, where he was trained by Bill Ruane, the investor Warren Buffett had asked to manage his former partners' capital. The firm itself traces back to 1968, when Eugene H. Gardner founded Gardner Investments as a sole proprietorship; it was renamed Gardner Russo & Gardner in 2000 and took its current name in 2014. Russo invests globally in a deliberately small list of businesses — family-controlled food, beverage, tobacco, and media companies with strong brands and high returns on invested capital — that he aims to keep for decades. He turns the portfolio over very slowly and argues that shareholders must accept what he calls the "capacity to suffer," enduring short-term pain rather than selling good franchises during rough patches. His own record shows the conviction: he has held Berkshire Hathaway since 1981 and Nestlé since 1986, positions that predate his time at Gardner and have survived decades of market swings. Russo credits the teachings of Warren Buffett and Bill Ruane, and he advises the student-managed 5x5x5 Russo Investment Fund at Columbia Business School.