ValueAct Capital

ValueAct Capital

Jeffrey Ubben founded ValueAct Capital in San Francisco in June 2000, after a career that began at Fidelity Investments, where he managed the Fidelity Value Fund and worked alongside investor Peter Lynch, and included a stretch as a managing partner at Blum Capital. The firm is now run by Mason Morfit, who joined at its founding straight from equity research at Credit Suisse First Boston and rose through the ranks to become CEO in 2020 when Ubben retired; Rob Hale joined him as co-CEO in 2024. Ubben had built the firm alongside co-founders George Hamel and Peter Kamin. ValueAct is an activist investor known for what it calls "quiet activism": it takes concentrated positions in large public companies and works with management and boards over the long term rather than waging public campaigns. The firm holds for years, relies on deep fundamental research, and often takes board seats to guide change from the inside instead of confronting executives in public. That approach was on display at Microsoft, where ValueAct built a position in 2013 and Morfit joined the board the following year, during the company's shift toward Satya Nadella's leadership. The firm has since taken similar collaborative roles at companies including Salesforce, The New York Times Company, and Rolls-Royce, consistently trading on the premise that patient, behind-the-scenes partnerships deliver more than noisy shareholder fights.

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