We have established these guiding principles to help us stay focused on our objectives. As the foundation of everything we do at Fairway, we believe these principles provide the best opportunity for success, make us a trustworthy partner, and support a positive firm culture.
1. Our efforts are directed toward generating attractive investment performance and excellent client service.
We do not have a specific goal of “maximizing shareholder value” for Fairway Capital’s management company. Success for Fairway Capital Management means delivering outstanding investment performance and service to our clients. Given our different approach, Fairway’s revenue mix is likely to have a relatively small amount coming from management fees and a relatively large amount coming from performance-related fees.
2. Our interests are strongly aligned with our clients.
We believe an investment manager’s interests are truly aligned with its clients when the manager’s economic rewards are directly linked to client results. All of our investment offerings are structured in a way that achieves this alignment. First and foremost, our professionals invest a significant amount of their personal wealth alongside our clients. Further, we charge management fees that are dramatically lower than the industry average and we place more emphasis on performance-related fees.
3. We always maintain the highest ethical standards.
These high ethical standards apply to all actions inside and outside the workplace, but particularly with regard to interactions with our clients, other investors and regulators. Our employees are expected to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest with any activities. Our simple mantra is “do the right thing”.
With Clients
We are entirely focused on achieving attractive results for our clients. As such, our clients’ interests always come first. Further, we are honest and forthright in all of our client communications. We attempt to use clear and understandable language in all of our communications and never feel the need to “spin” any facts. Open, honest dialogue with a focus on the client’s interest may forgo a near-term new business opportunity while building long-term trust—we believe this is always a worthy trade off.
With Other Investors
Our word is our bond. There is nothing more important than our reputation in the marketplace. While the investment business is quite competitive and we work hard to achieve positive results for our clients, we strive to always conduct ourselves in an honest and ethical manner.
With Regulators
We act within both the letter and spirit of any rule or regulation. Whenever possible, we attempt to conduct our operations in a manner that avoids violating, or even approaching violating, any ethical or technical boundaries.
4. Diverse teams working in a collaborative environment make better decisions.
We believe a diversity of backgrounds leads to better decision making and better outcomes for our clients. Everyone in the Firm is focused on achieving our two objectives of delivering attractive long-term investment performance and great client service, and our Firm is structured to maximize the likelihood of achieving these objectives. In particular, our ownership structure, compensation system and individual responsibilities are all designed to ensure that every employee has the appropriate incentives in order to be laser-focused on his or her role, within the context of a supportive team environment. Some representative examples of roles and responsibilities are as follows:
Investment Professionals
Delivering superior long-term investment performance is a challenging objective. As such, our investment professionals should be singularly-focused on achieving this goal. Our investment professionals should spend the vast majority of their time focused on contributing to investment results. Our investment professionals’ performance assessments and compensation rewards are a function of success in meeting this objective.
Account Managers
Delivering great client service starts with developing strong, long-lasting relationships with our clients. New business opportunities are the result of understanding the client’s investment needs, and matching those needs to our offerings and available capacity.
5. Fairway Capital Management should be an enjoyable place to work.
Enjoying ourselves and maintaining a pleasant working environment are important elements of our success. The investment business is extremely competitive. Achieving the results that we desire for our clients requires a significant commitment of time and effort. We also think it is important for our employees to be well-rounded in their interests. While we are firmly committed to delivering great results, we believe this can be accomplished while maintaining a healthy work/life balance.
We expect Fairway Capital’s business objectives, ownership structure, compensation system and overall working environment to be very attractive to certain professionals that are like-minded in their desire to work diligently to provide great results for our clients. Our compensation system is designed to ensure that we are able to attract the right professionals.
