The San Francisco-based firm, founded in 1930, is exemplary in many ways. Its investment committees gather diverse viewpoints and distribute decision-making authority in a manner that significantly reduces key-person risk. Its analyst corps is talented and stable. Its modest suite of only seven strategies has taken shape organically as the firm’s capacities have grown. Investors in its funds pay relatively modest fees. All this garnered Dodge & Cox Morningstar’s Award for Exemplary Stewardship in 2021.
While the conservatively run firm isn’t likely to be at the forefront of change, it’s taking a considered approach to its development. Masterful succession planning helps it bridge transitions seamlessly—such as the retirements of key leaders Charles Pohl and Diana Strandberg in 2022. It has invested extensively in risk management and portfolio construction tools—weak spots in the past—and waded intrepidly into quantitative models for the first time to support Dodge & Cox Emerging Markets Stock, its newest and farthest-reaching strategy. It also opened a small outpost in Shanghai in 2021—its first investment office outside of San Francisco.
In short, Dodge & Cox continues to deliver what investors have come to expect but is adapting appropriately.