ValueAct Capital

Jeff Ubben didn’t leave Fidelity because he was bad at the job. He left because he was too good at it—and the money wouldn’t stop coming in. He kept trying to shrink the number of names in his portfolio, but the fund kept getting bigger and positions kept piling up. He hated that feeling and wanted a change of scenery.

That frustration with “big money” became the seed of ValueAct. Ubben wanted fewer positions, a smaller asset base, and the freedom to think long term instead of constantly putting cash to work. Everything that followed traces back to that one constraint he refused to accept. To understand how ValueAct invests as an activist, we have to start with the founder and the face of the firm, Jeff Ubben.

Jeff Ubben

Jeff Ubben grew up in Chicago. His father was a money manager, so investing was always in the background. He went to Duke for undergrad and earned his MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

In 1986, he joined Fidelity Investments as an analyst. He was good. By 1990, he was managing Fidelity’s value fund. But there was a problem: Fidelity was too big.

Money kept pouring in. Each new inflow forced him to add positions, and the portfolio ballooned to roughly 120 names. Ubben tried to shrink it, but constant inflows kept undoing the work. He felt stuck.