Interview With Southeastern's Josh Shores by Longleaf Partners We had the distinct pleasure of catching up with Josh Shores at the offices of Southeastern Asset Management in London in May. Josh is an integral member of Southeastern’s investment team, having been with the firm since 2007. He has twelve years of investment experience and holds a BA (Philosophy and Religious Studies) from the University of North Carolina. Southeastern, founded in 1975, is led by famed value investors Mason Hawkins and Staley Cates. The Manual of Ideas: Such a pleasure to welcome Josh Shores, Southeastern Asset Management. Josh, thank you for hosting us here in your wonderful offices in London. Josh Shores: Thank you, John. Good to have you today. MOI: Very excited to speak with you about the investment approach at Southeastern. You’ve been at the firm a number of years. You are based in Europe now, and so perhaps just to get started you could tell us a little bit about your journey as an investor and your focus at Southeastern. Josh Shores: Sure, I’d be happy to. I have somewhat of a typical value guy story where I became interested in the markets as a teenager and was in university, studying philosophy, and had a good friend who knew I was interested in investing. He invited me to an investment club, which led me to Roger Hagstrom, which then led to classic Graham and Buffett, reading Security Analysis and reading all of Buffett’s annual letters. I would say it was a Damascus road type of experience. I knew I was interested in investing and finance, and the philosophy, the “big ideas” aspect of value investing appealed to me – understanding the idea of thinking and acting like an owner, buying with a margin of safety, the classic value tenets. These core truths really resonated with me and from that time it was a journey where I knew this was what I’m going to do... More