Mike Gitlin – The Century of Capital Group (EP.479)
Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Ted Seides – Allocator and Asset Management Expert
4.8 • 806 Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2026
⏱️ 67 minutes
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Summary
Today's episode continues our ongoing mini-series covering organizations that have proven to be great training grounds of talent. There may be none larger and quieter than Capital Group, the $3.2 trillion global asset manager whose 650-person investment team and 9,400 associates have historically experienced a fraction of the turnover of industry norms.
My guest is Mike Gitlin, the CEO of Capital Group, known for its long-term philosophy, private ownership, and multi-manager investment system. Founded in 1931 by Johnathan Bell Lovelace, Capital Group is one of the industry's largest and most enduring active managers. Mike joined the firm as a lateral hire in 2015, after more than two decades across the buy side, sell side, hedge funds, and global markets.
Our exploration of Capital Group covers Mike's path through the investment industry, Capital's approach to recruiting and training talent, ownership model, client-centric focus, Capital System investment model, organization of a large, global team, and new product development. We close with Capital Group's five-year strategic plan as it approaches the firm's hundred-year anniversary in 2031.
I've been fascinated by Capital for most of my life, as it was the professional home for my uncle, the late Jim Rothenberg, for his entire 45 year career. It is a privilege for me to share this conversation with memories of Uncle Jim in mind.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | the mindset of the Lovelace family was not optimizing for the Lovelace family. When JBL founded the company, |
| 0:07.6 | he said in 1931, when my grandkids, who didn't exist at the time, when my grandkids pass away, |
| 0:15.8 | no one in the Lovelace family should own any bit of Capital group stock. There's very few founding families that |
| 0:22.3 | would say that. His point was, it should be owned by the people who are working at the company |
| 0:27.9 | at the time who are driving the client outcomes. That is a very powerful statement to make nearly |
| 0:33.5 | 100 years ago. It can sound complex, but it's pretty simple. No investor should want to be |
| 0:41.3 | with a company where you're left with a single individual's 300th best idea. That's what happens. |
| 0:48.1 | When you're a sole practitioner in a strategy and you're managing a lot of money and you're |
| 0:53.4 | diversified, you could be left with |
| 0:55.8 | someone's less high conviction parts of the portfolio. The bottom 25% of their conviction names, |
| 1:03.2 | why would you want those in a portfolio? You have analysts who are subject matter experts in a certain |
| 1:08.3 | sector and they have high conviction, you want those stocks |
| 1:11.7 | in the portfolio. |
| 1:13.0 | Your analysts who have conviction in their subject matter expertise, great. |
| 1:17.2 | Those names make their way in to the portfolio. |
| 1:19.7 | You have portfolio managers, five of them, ten of them, whatever the mandate would be, |
| 1:24.3 | all expressing their conviction, all seeing what everyone else is doing, all using |
| 1:28.7 | the research that we have internally, all having their own individual conviction. |
| 1:34.0 | What you end up in a portfolio is everyone has the same mandate, but you have the strongest |
| 1:39.9 | convictions of individuals not being left with any of their lower conviction ideas. Think of it as a |
| 1:46.3 | multiple portfolio manager and analysts run best idea portfolio as opposed to such a broad, |
| 1:52.8 | diversified one person's strategy. I'm Ted Sides, and this is Capital Allocators. |
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