Conglomerates

[Partner24]

Since I don't have a lot of time to spend on analyzing individual businesses, I generaly buy good diversified conglomerates managed by disciplined capital allocators. Stocks like Markel, Clarke, Long4life, etc. If you have some names to share, it would be much appreciated. Ideally businesses that are not too big so they still have large opportunities to expand. Thank you!

[Guest cherzeca]

or how about a conglomerate to be?  amazon. too big? not imo, huge expansion opportunities surrounding its core prime membership. not just prime....as AWS expands, they will bolt onto it many additional business. 

[Grahamfan2]

Graham Holdings (GHC), formerly the Washington Post Co. would fit your description. Management learned from the best, Warren; have Tom Gayner on board, have lots of insider capital invested and have gone to a mini-conglomerate model

[Spekulatius]

I am not sure, why owning a conglomerate saves you from having to analyzing the business. In a way, owning a conglomerate makes the problem worse, because you need to Analyse all the components of a conglomerate. I guess , the idea is just to own a good capital allocator and be done with it?

 

I guess you could look at holding companies as well than  conglomerates. There are quite a few to chose from in Europe and Asia. Investor AB, Exor NV, Groupe Brüssel Lambert /Pargesa , Schouw & Co, CK Hutchison and Jardine Matheson are some that come to my mind and are quite cheap and reasonably well managed.