What makes a great company?

Alex Duffy, Portfolio Manager of the Fidelity Global Emerging Markets Fund, sees some common characteristics among the management teams of great companies.

• A deep ownership culture. There’s a desire to “do the right thing” by the customer and create a great product.
• Longevity and depth of management. The company isn’t “a one-man show,” and high-level roles are filled from within the organisation.
• Incentives aligned. Senior management should have equity ownership rather than stock options, and share plans should be longer-term in nature.

“The best companies that I’ve found are those that identify their opportunity set and they don’t worry about the growth rate being a certain level above or below their peer group. They just execute on a good product and they consistently execute on that well.”

In this video, he also explains what characteristics he’s seen amongst the worst companies.