Founded in 1994, we are an investment management firm that provides a broad
range of U.S., non-U.S. and global investment strategies, each of which is managed
by one of our seven distinct and autonomous investment teams. Since our founding,
we have pursued a business model that is designed to maximize our ability to
produce attractive investment results for our clients, and we believe this model
has contributed to our success in doing so. We focus on attracting, retaining
and developing talented investment professionals by creating an environment
in which each investment team is provided ample resources and support, transparent
and direct financial incentives, and a high degree of investment autonomy. Each
of our investment teams is led by one or more experienced portfolio managers
with a track record of strong investment performance and is devoted to identifying
long-term investment opportunities. We believe this autonomous structure promotes
independent analysis and accountability among our investment professionals,
which we believe promotes superior investment results.
Each of our investment strategies is designed to have a clearly articulated,
consistent and replicable investment process that is well-understood by clients
and managed to achieve long-term performance. Throughout our history, we have
expanded our investment management capabilities in a disciplined manner that
we believe is consistent with our overall philosophy of offering high value-added
investment strategies in growing asset classes. We have expanded the range of
strategies that we offer by launching new strategies managed by our existing
investment teams as those teams have developed investment capacity, such as
our Global Small-Cap Growth strategy, which we launched in June 2013, as well
as by launching new strategies managed by new investment teams recruited to
join Artisan. During 2014, we established the Artisan Credit Team, which manages
the Artisan High Income strategy, our first fixed income strategy. During 2015,
we established the Artisan Developing World Team, which manages the Artisan
Developing World strategy.
We launch a new strategy only when we believe it has the potential to achieve
superior investment performance in an area that we believe will have sustained
client demand at attractive fee rates over the long term. We strive to maintain
the integrity of the investment process followed in each of our strategies by
rigorous adherence to the investment parameters we have communicated to our
clients. We also carefully monitor our investment capacity in each investment
strategy. We believe that management of our investment capacity protects our
ability to manage assets successfully, which protects the interests of our clients
and, in the long term, protects our ability to retain client assets and maintain
our profit margins. In order to better achieve our long-term goals, we are willing
to close a strategy to new investors or otherwise take action to slow or restrict
its growth, even though our short-term results may be impacted.
In addition to our investment teams, we have a management team that is focused
on our business objectives of achieving profitable growth, expanding our investment
capabilities, diversifying the source of our assets under management and delivering
superior client service. Our management team supports our investment management
capabilities and manages a centralized infrastructure, which allows our investment
professionals to focus primarily on making investment decisions and generating
returns for our clients.
We offer our investment management capabilities primarily to institutions and
through intermediaries that operate with institutional-like decision-making
processes and have longer-term investment horizons, by means of separate accounts
and mutual funds.
We access traditional institutional clients primarily through relationships
with investment consultants. We access other institutional-like investors primarily
through consultants, alliances with major defined contribution/401(k) platforms
and relationships with financial advisors and broker-dealers. We derive essentially
all of our revenues from investment management fees, which primarily are based
on a specified percentage of clients’ average assets under management.
These fees are derived from investment advisory and sub-advisory agreements
that are terminable by clients upon short notice or no notice.
11.93%