Yacktman Asset Management

Don Yacktman

US-listed stocks across every Yacktman-managed account, including accounts that belong to no fund below. Don Yacktman is the founder of Yacktman Asset Management, the value shop he started in 1992. His schooling is Ivy League and Utah: an economics degree magna cum laude from the University of Utah and an MBA with distinction from Harvard. He spent fourteen years as a portfolio manager at Stein Roe & Farnham before running the Selected American Shares fund for nearly a decade, work that brought him Morningstar's Portfolio Manager of the Year award in 1991. Yacktman built the firm around a straightforward conviction: buy quality at a discount. He looks for companies with big market share, strong cash generation, and management that treats shareholders fairly, but only buys when the price leaves room to earn. He runs a concentrated book of a handful of high-conviction names and holds them for years, and he is not one to reach. When the market offers nothing cheap, he is comfortable sitting in cash rather than settling for mediocre ideas. In 2016 Yacktman stepped back from day-to-day fund management, passing the CIO role to his son Stephen, who had been with the firm since 1993 and co-managed its funds for well over a decade. Yacktman stayed on in an advisory capacity. The firm's calling card is patience: it built up large cash reserves ahead of the 2007 downturn, then put that money to work when prices finally fell to its standards.