August 2026 Recap

The disclosed holdings of managers in OWL’s Emerging Markets – Other group performed the best in August. This group includes managers investing in emerging markets without an individual country (China, India, Brazil) focus. Their performance was closely followed by managers in OWL’s Energy and Cyclicals group and our Biotech group.

As a reminder, the table below is based on our “OWL Groups” – curated lists of over 500 managers frequently found in leading allocators’ portfolios. These lists are categorized by geography, sector, and style, enabling our users to easily monitor groups of managers and their underlying disclosed holdings. All returns shown are estimates based on publicly disclosed holdings.

We have recently expanded the number of OWL manager groups meaningfully across asset classes and strategies, and have also created allocator groups. Examples of some of our new OWL Groups include Small/Mid Buyouts, Crossover (Public/Private), Emerging VC, Big Endowments, OCIOs, and Southeast Allocators.

In Friday’s newsletter, users received a list of the 20 best- and worst-performing managers in August. One of August’s best performers was LB Partners, a Charlottesville-based fund with a focus on investing in “generational compounding” businesses.

LB was founded in 2020 by Chas Cocke, who spent the previous 16 years as a co-founder and partner at Investure, the Charlottesville-based OCIO. Cocke, who attributes his introduction to investing to his childhood hobby of collecting valuable baseball cards, got his start in institutional investment management in 2002 as an analyst at UVIMCO covering hedge funds and public equity.

At Investure Cocke led outside manager research focusing on concentrated, long-duration fundamental managers. In a November 2021 podcast with Capital Allocators, he described his approach as a deliberate focus on reaching managers before their pitch materials were built for them. “Part of our job was to get there before the corrupting influence of Wall Street and see if we could help protect their vision,” he said, describing a research effort focused on identifying the second and third seats at funds Investure admired before they spun out their own shops.

In another podcast with Meb Faber Research published that same week, Cocke expanded on this idea, saying that “ultimately, it really is a bet on people. And we think we can identify people before they have an easily underwritable track record.”

Cocke developed a direct investment strategy inside of Investure, which he worked on for several years with David Landry, who now runs Demesne Investments, a concentrated public equity fund based in Greenville, SC.

Cocke left Investure to launch LB Partners in 2020, and was joined by CCO and COO Rich Florin, who previously spent a decade as a director at Freddie Mac.

Today, LB Partners reports a regulatory AUM of roughly $191 million. LB discloses 30 long positions as of 6/30/26, with its top three positions making up over 50% of its portfolio:

LB’s largest currently disclosed position is NIQ Global Intelligence, also known as NielsenIQ, the consumer intelligence and marketing research firm spun out of Nielsen Holdings in 2021. The firm was bought by Advent International before completing a $1.05 billion IPO in July 2025, the same quarter in which LB first disclosed its position.

NIQ’s shares dropped from $21 at its IPO to as low as $8 in June of this year, then nearly doubled in August, going from $11 to nearly $20 and driving a large portion of LB’s performance last month.

Another firm that benefitted greatly in August from NIQ’s increase was Alamut Investment Management. Alamut discloses just two positions as of 6/30/26 – NIQ and Liberty Media Formula One.

Alamut is a London-based manager founded by Faiz Bhanji, a former partner at Naya. Alamut has grown its regulatory AUM from $62 million in 2025 to $493 million as of March 2026 and its small team includes partners with backgrounds at Naya, KKR, and Taconic Capital. 

OWL highlighted Alamut to our users in last year’s New ADV Filers update.

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

Returns represent the return on invested capital of publicly disclosed long positions, as calculated by OWL. Actual returns may vary based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) undisclosed positions, short exposure, non-equity holdings, cash holdings, and lagged disclosure of positions.

This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Certain investment managers, funds, or limited partners (“LPs”) referenced herein may be current or prospective clients of Old Well Labs, and Old Well Labs may have business relationships with such parties. Accordingly, references to any manager, fund, or LP should not be construed as an endorsement, recommendation, or solicitation. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.