BROWN ADVISORY ANNUAL REPORT
PARTNERSHIP
Relevant & Compelling Solutions
To create a solution that is relevant, it must be aimed at the right, client-specific challenge. To create a solution that is compelling, it must deliver the value it was intended to generate. To achieve these bars, our work begins with listening so that we can get a clear understanding of our clients’ long-term investment, financial and strategic objectives. We then bring the firm’s resources and thinking across investment, strategic advisory and client service to source the opportunities that will help each client achieve their goals.
"Thoughtful Investing"
is a dedication to rigorous, fundamental research to gain a deep understanding of the businesses, issuers and managers in which we invest our clients’ capital. It is the patience to allow the quality of strategies, companies and allocators to compound our clients’ capital over time. It is the humility needed to make objective, unbiased decisions and to learn from our mistakes. It is an appreciation of context so that ideas can be kept in proper perspective. It is the belief that teams — through varied perspectives, collaboration and a willingness to challenge one another — create the best outcomes for clients. It is the vision that most relevant and compelling results are measured in absolute returns and risk.
Our Clients
We are privileged to serve an inspiring group of individuals, families, nonprofits, charities, institutions and financial intermediaries around the world. For each, we work to achieve first-rate investment performance, thoughtful strategic advice and the highest level of service to help them get to wherever it is they want to go.
As investors and advisors, we have a singular objective: to help our clients succeed based on their own very specific definition of success. Through partnerships, we aspire to create thoughtful, compelling and relevant solutions that meet each of our clients’ unique needs.
Our Solutions Platform
Today’s investment landscape is more complex and dynamic than ever before. Structural shifts in public markets, the continued rise of passive investing and an unprecedented concentration of market value in a handful of companies are reshaping how investors must think about risk, diversification and opportunity. Against this backdrop, our responsibility to clients has never been clearer: We must look beyond conventional approaches and create solutions tailored to their unique objectives and circumstances.
“Good ideas come from everywhere. As investors, we must cultivate a culture that embraces and fosters sharing and collaboration. That is the best — and, frankly, the only — way that we can develop and execute investment strategies that are aligned with our clients’ objectives.”
Solutions for Private Clients
We partner with individuals and families — from entrepreneurs building their first business to established family offices — to provide investment management, strategic advice and high-touch client service that is custom-fit to each client’s goals. Everything we do stems from listening closely to the values, aspirations, interests and family circumstances of our clients so that we can best invest and plan for their collective futures.
We take a holistic, total portfolio approach to address our clients’ long-term objectives. We build portfolios across asset classes, geographies and sectors to thoughtfully match absolute return opportunities with a prudent level of risk. Rather than focusing on outperforming benchmarks, we design and select investment solutions based on the specific role each plays in helping clients meet their targeted return objectives and defined risk parameters. Benchmarks may be used as one tool to evaluate strategies, but they are not the primary driver of portfolio construction.
We promote transparent collaboration between our research and client teams, and encourage open debate and innovative thinking. By continuously evaluating market dynamics and asking pointed questions, we strive to create relevant and compelling portfolios aligned to client-defined investment goals and risk tolerances, and designed for long-term growth and protection of capital.
Beyond investment decisions, our strategic advisors serve as thinking partners for clients, helping to optimize tax, estate, generational, philanthropic and business planning — incorporating each client’s specific situation and values. We help think about their balance sheet strategically — including liquidity, cash flow, funding decisions and tax implications. As client relationships evolve, we partner with them to address generational questions, governance structures and nextgeneration education.
Our client service teams build trusted partnerships with every client. We strive to anticipate needs and provide seamless support for both day-to-day matters and major life events — guiding decisions around health care, family transitions, philanthropy and trust funding. Acting as an extension of each family or organization, our advisors foster enduring relationships through clarity, care and proactive communication.
We match advisors to each client’s needs through a consistent, data-driven process that ensures personalized attention. Our client service team’s expertise — including MBAs, CFAs, CAIAs, CFPs, advanced tax and trust degrees, and legal backgrounds — ensures we can match the right team to the right client.
“It’s an honor to develop strategic solutions for clients, helping them build plans to prepare for and address the intricacies of life, family circumstances and long-term goals.”
Trust and Fiduciary Solutions
We provide trust and fiduciary services with a pragmatic, client-first mindset. We take responsibility for even the most intricate trust relationships, offering clear expertise and practical solutions to achieve the best outcomes for our clients.
Our fiduciary advisory team handles complex trust administration and uses an exceptions-based approach to enforce standards efficiently. By getting the basics right from the start, we create space to focus on solving problems and improving our clients’ lives. Beyond administration, we deliver proactive guidance and responsive support, enabling clients to confidently navigate wealth transfer, estate planning and fiduciary responsibilities. Our goal is to be a trusted partner — providing straightforward, client-focused solutions.
Solutions for Large and Complex Clients
Some families ask us to be their primary investment partner; others ask us to complement their existing single-family office or collaborate with a multifamily office. We design our role around the objectives specific to each client — from portfolio construction across public and private markets to strategic advice on governance, trusts and philanthropy, and the reporting and cadence that keeps everything aligned. In each case, our aim is to be indispensable to our clients’ success, serving as a trusted thought partner and advisor as their needs grow in complexity across asset classes, geographies and generations.
Delivering this level of partnership requires a highly coordinated, firmwide approach. Our work is supported by a global and connected research platform and deep collaboration across investment teams, advisory professionals, and operational and service specialists. By coordinating resources and expertise across teams and regions, we deliver relevant and compelling investment and strategic advice wherever our clients are located. Clients benefit from access to a broad investment toolkit, agnostic in style and designed to pursue long-term absolute returns with thoughtful risk management. The result is an integrated, collaborative approach that brings together performance, strategic insight and trusted service for complex families and individuals.
“We Don’t Have a Monopoly on Good Ideas.”
“We do not have clients; we have partners. Each of those partnerships is unique, built to meet specific needs and evolve as those needs change. Over the past few years, our business has expanded significantly and, in turn, increased our network and deal flow, strengthening our ability to source and diligence ideas.
“Information is not, and cannot, be a one-way street — we don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. Our partners (clients) are often in the trenches with us. When we are open with them, and show them our investment process, they want to jump in by making introductions that augment our due diligence.
“Just as important as the opportunities that make their way into portfolios is showing our work and pipeline on the investments that don’t. This transparency enables us to build incredibly close and trusted partnerships, creates a tight feedback loop among our team and our partners, and helps us build on our true sustainable advantage — a longer-term mindset.”
Solutions for Sports Professionals
Having advised sports professionals and worked in the business of sports since our firm’s founding, we realize that stakeholders in this industry have specialized needs. Our dedicated sports advisory team — led by Victor Abiamiri, who played in the NFL, and Damon Gooch, who played professional tennis — helps athletes and stakeholders in the sports ecosystem protect and grow their financial assets, create alignment among their external advisors, prepare for the future and create an enduring legacy.
Solutions for Business Builders
One of our first clients was a remarkable inventor and entrepreneur. Since then, we have guided hundreds of leaders in planning the future of their businesses and building their legacies. We partner with business builders around the world — many preparing for a liquidity event or navigating one right now — to translate business equity into durable family capital, purpose and impact.
We strive to meet business owners where they are and be their long-term, trusted partner.
Even before they have investable assets, we welcome business builders into the Brown Advisory ecosystem. We connect them to our network, share insights on raising capital and strategic options, and help them prepare a strong foundation through coordinated investment, business, estate and tax planning. When liquidity is on the horizon, we design a clear plan for cash flow, risk management and tax efficiency, and coordinate with their legal and tax advisors to simplify execution. After a transaction, we tailor a bespoke investment strategy — across public and private markets — that aligns with goals, values and time horizon, without unnecessary complexity. We believe our work with these innovative leaders is a vote for the future.
“We focus on partnering holistically with our business-builder clients to lay a solid foundation — one that translates their sweat equity into long-term ROI for their family. We listen to where they want to go, so that we can put them in a position to feel confident and comfortable about their futures.”
“We Listen Closely Because We Know It Matters.”
Sometimes partnerships are built and calculated for a particular moment or challenge. Sometimes they form organically — this was the case for Paul Chew and Meredith Shuey Etherington. A somewhat happenstance collaboration that began more than 15 years ago has evolved into a relationship with a deeply positive impact on clients, on our West Coast colleagues and on the firm overall.
Solutions for Impact
Trusted partnership is the foundation of the work we do with clients who want to generate measurable social and environmental impact alongside financial returns. We take them through an in-depth process where our first job is listening, as clients reflect on, define and articulate their priorities and the change they want to see in the world. We have frank conversations about priorities and values, interest areas, risk-return tolerance, and what success looks like.
Then we translate those values into holistic investment strategies — drawing on our research platform, as well as our network of investment partners, across geographies, asset classes and thematic focus areas — to build portfolios designed to express clients’ impact goals, while also generating their desired financial returns and liquidity.
One example of a meaningful, strategic partnership is our relationship with CrossBoundary, an investment firm focused on unlocking capital in underserved markets globally. CrossBoundary extends our capacity, contacts and expertise in parts of the world often overlooked by capital markets and helps us support clients who seek investment opportunities in those regions.
“Our job is to partner with clients to diagnose the issues they care most about and the problems they want to solve — and then build and continually refine an investment strategy based on their desired outcomes.”
“Being a partner to our clients is a commitment to clarity, a bias toward action and a demonstrated ownership of their objectives. Partners don’t wait to communicate; they proactively bring people together so everyone stays aligned and informed.”
Solutions for Endowments and Foundations
For endowments, foundations, charities and other nonprofits, we provide investment solutions, strategic advice and policy consultation to help them fulfill their organizational missions. Whether organizations are seeking a specific investment solution or a fully outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO), our teams partner with management and investment committees to execute their investment objectives, navigate their fiduciary challenges and consult with their many stakeholders.
We design our support to address the real challenges they face — funding uncertainties, liquidity constraints and shifting market conditions. Instead of generic solutions, we provide investment management, advice and client service tailored to each institution’s financial needs and objectives.
Our OCIO team applies a disciplined process to portfolio construction, stress testing for market volatility and liquidity needs. We work closely with specialists across asset classes, including private equity and alternatives, to build portfolios that are compelling and relevant — structured to meet both near-term spending and long-term growth requirements.
Beyond investments, we support organizations with operational guidance, governance structure and committee training to help them adapt to leadership changes and maintain effective oversight. We strive to serve as an extension of our clients’ teams, helping them stay focused on their mission by providing strategic insight, operational problem-solving and board governance support — in whatever capacity they may need a caring, trusted advisor.
Our goal is to provide nonprofit clients with clear, actionable solutions that help them manage risk, preserve capital and confidently pursue their mission.
“We aim to be trusted and indispensable partners to our clients by delivering more than investment performance. We commit to collaborate, innovate and educate — to help clients navigate complex markets and achieve their missions over the long term. ”
“With the extraordinary evolution of the private markets, we have reframed our team and structure so that we can provide consistently compelling, relevant private investment research, advice and vehicles to our clients. Under the umbrella of Private Investment Advisory, partnerships — with our clients and the firms with whom we work across the private investment landscape — allow us to bring investment edge to our work. Creating value for clients requires the thinking and knowledge of our network — our job is to connect all of the dots.”
Private Investment Advisory Solutions
Over the long term, we believe that private market investments can, and should, outperform public market equivalents in client portfolios. While many firms lead with products that charge high fees, we lead with advice and research. Our advice depends on our clients’ preferences, liquidity needs, return goals and risk tolerances. Our research connects clients to multidisciplinary teams — across buyouts, venture capital, growth equity, real estate, private credit, real assets, infrastructure, secondaries and impact — that educate, advise and generate ideas through an independent lens. The goal is to create highly differentiated portfolios of private investments that meet our clients where they are.
Private Investment Portfolio Management
We partner with our clients to build highly customized private investment portfolios, intentionally integrated within the broader portfolio and aligned with long-term objectives. Since our firm’s inception, Brown Advisory has developed bespoke private investment portfolios for entrepreneurs, multi-generational families, endowments and foundations — all focused on compounding wealth over the long term. Our advisory approach combines deep research and experience to educate clients, recommend commitment strategies and structure portfolios, mindful of pacing and liquidity needs. Our goal is to advise — not lead with products — and we strive to be a thoughtful and dedicated long-term partner to clients with meaningful private investment exposure.
Private Fund Investment
We provide access to and insights from managers that cover the private investment landscape, spanning the full spectrum of private market investments. We review hundreds of managers across all segments annually, and develop an independent perspective on both established and emerging managers as we strive to find standout managers that meet client interests and can drive meaningful outperformance.
Direct Private Investment
Incorporating clients, colleagues, directors, investment partners and relationships across our communities, our network provides differentiated perspectives — interesting ideas can and do come from anywhere. We strive to be a trusted partner with a researchfirst approach that delivers unbiased advice; we review hundreds of direct investment opportunities each year and develop conviction in only a select few. By understanding client interests and broader asset allocation frameworks, we curate opportunities from earlystage companies to mature, cash-flowing businesses, focusing on distinguishing direct investments with long-term portfolio potential and acting nimbly and proactively on behalf of clients when compelling opportunities arise.
“The large clients with whom we work value the opportunities our private investments team is able to access, as well as the deep experience and perspectives the team can bring to opportunities that our clients source themselves.“
Equity and Fixed Income Strategies
Our single-strategy equity and fixed income business seeks to build differentiated, compelling and relevant investment strategies tailored to the needs of institutional and intermediary clients worldwide. These strategies are developed by our in-house investment teams and, where appropriate, through strategic external manager partnerships and are held to the highest standards of best-in-class research and innovation.
Our approach is research intensive and bottom up, grounded in deep due diligence to identify high-quality businesses and issuers that we believe have the ability to deliver durable, long-term returns. We strive to deliver world-class investment research and portfolio management, supported by an investment culture defined by rigor, debate, collaboration, accountability and continuous improvement.
Our strategies are variously available as mutual funds, UCITS funds, active ETFs, separately managed accounts (SMAs), model delivery and CITs. Guided by a commitment to process-driven investment excellence, we focus on generating strong, long-term performance and outcomes that align with each client’s objectives. Our approach emphasizes achieving attractive absolute returns and thoughtful portfolio construction, rather than simply mirroring or outperforming traditional benchmarks. We believe that rigorous analysis and intentional positioning are essential to navigating today’s market environment and meeting our clients’ needs.
Equity Strategies and Philosophy
The Brown Advisory equity platform is grounded in actively managed, low-turnover and concentrated strategies aimed at generating attractive, risk-adjusted returns over the long term. Our investment team applies a disciplined, repeatable process and rigorous, bottom-up research to identify high-conviction investment ideas, with a clear focus on delivering relevant, compelling and differentiated strategies for long-termoriented clients. All strategies are held to a high bar for alignment with client objectives.
Our suite of U.S. and global equity strategies offers a broad spectrum of solutions across market capitalizations — including large-cap, mid cap and small cap — as well as across growth, value and core investment styles. This breadth allows us to remain selective and adaptive as market leadership evolves. For example, in periods when concentrated U.S. growth strategies have been challenged, we have continued to innovate thoughtfully, introducing newer strategies such as Large-Cap Sustainable Value, Global Focus, Global Value Select and International Value Select, where our research has identified durable opportunity.
To support this research-intensive approach, the team is increasingly leveraging a combination of off-the-shelf and proprietary tools, leaning heavily on AI, to enhance our investment research and decision-making. These tools are used to expand analytical depth, surface insights more efficiently and streamline elements of the research process — allowing investment professionals to devote more time to high-value fundamental analysis and portfolio judgment.
U.S. Equity Strategies
We view platform development as an ongoing, disciplined process rather than a static lineup of products. We continually evaluate strategies based on investment merit, client demand and long-term viability, refining or expanding the platform where conviction is strongest. Innovation may come from our in-house teams or, where appropriate, through strategic external partnerships that complement our capabilities and meet our standards for best-in-class research and execution. In some cases, solutions are developed in close collaboration with clients — such as our Sustainable Small-Cap Core strategy, co-managed by Emily Dwyer MacLellan — reflecting our belief that the most effective investment solutions are often shaped by real client needs.
Together, this approach enables us to construct focused portfolios tailored to a range of client objectives, supported by a consistent emphasis on research excellence, disciplined innovation and long-term performance.
Solutions in Value
Large-Cap Sustainable Value
Despite the long-term track record of value investing, the space has been generally out of favor for the last decade versus its growth counterpart. Sensing an opportunity, clients asked us to develop a large-cap value strategy. Now celebrating its third anniversary and managed by Mike Poggi, the strategy invests in companies that we think can drive enhanced performance over time through culture and capital discipline, operational excellence, and product diversification.
“We must continually innovate to deliver for our clients. In 2026, we are launching Global Value Select, International Value Select and Global Aggregate Bond, expanding our global platform to meet growing client interest in differentiated value and fixed income strategies.”
Fixed Income Strategies and Philosophy
Brown Advisory’s actively managed fixed income strategies are designed to provide stability, generate alpha and manage risk over the long term. The platform is built and managed by dedicated in-house investment teams applying disciplined portfolio construction and consistent research standards, with a clear focus on delivering resilient outcomes across market environments.
The fixed income platform spans U.S. and global opportunities across corporate, securitized, supranational, sovereign and municipal markets, providing a broad yet focused set of solutions aligned with diverse client objectives.
Rather than relying on broad market exposure, our fixed income approach emphasizes fundamental credit insight, scenario-based risk assessment and intentional positioning. The team evaluates securityspecific upside and downside outcomes to construct concentrated portfolios that reflect their highest-conviction views while maintaining a strong emphasis on downside protection and risk control.
An important area of focus for the team is the continued expansion of our global fixed income platform. This effort began with the launch of Global Sustainable Total Return Bond and, in 2025, expanded to include Global Sustainable Income Bond. In 2026, we will launch Global Aggregate Bond to further expand the platform and meet the needs of our clients around the world.
At the same time, the team is thoughtfully integrating new tools — including advanced analytics and AI — to enhance portfolio management and deepen credit research. These tools are intended to improve efficiency, streamline workflows and strengthen analytical insight, freeing up time for higher-value investment work, supporting better decision-making and providing a sustainable source of investment edge.
Ongoing evolution of the platform is guided by market conditions and client needs, with innovation focused on areas where active management, research depth and disciplined execution can meaningfully improve outcomes over full market cycles.
Tax-Exempt Fixed Income Strategies
“Compounding Our Ability to Grow and Improve”
Mick and Bertie co-manage the Global Leaders strategy, which just passed its 10-year anniversary. They joined the firm from separate places with the aim of building something special — together. The global equity platform now comprises three strategies and a team of analysts scouring the globe for leading companies that can compound capital for clients over time. Their story is an example of how a fruitful partnership evolves over time and can thrive on psychology, experimental ways of working and a deepening trust between partners.
Connected Investment Research
Our research teams are defined by a commitment to process-driven excellence and an investment culture grounded in rigor, debate, collaboration, accountability and ongoing improvement. Employing a bottom-up, active approach, these teams provide insight and analysis that power our investment decisions. Portfolio managers across the firm work closely with research professionals to create solutions tailored to each client’s goals, ensuring that our research translates directly into client success.
As long-term investors, we seek to consider any data, factor, business tactic or strategy, economic or market condition — whether quantitative and qualitative — which we believe allows us to better understand the material challenges and opportunities facing a client, business or issuer. Within our research teams, we have sustainable investing specialists focused on the business strategies being employed to address natural resource, climate, human capital and governance issues.
Manager and Asset Allocation Research
Our Investment Solutions Group (ISG) combines disciplined analysis with innovative thinking to identify and monitor high-quality external managers for our private client, endowments and foundations clients. We view these external managers as long-term partners, engaging with them through active, ongoing dialogue — learning from their best practices while also sharing our perspectives on markets, portfolio construction and risk. ISG supports portfolio managers by providing comprehensive resources — including internal research, thoughtful analysis, key insights and continuous, two-way communication with our manager partners, all of which inform and enhance the investment decisions made on behalf of our clients.
Private Market Research
Our private markets research team covers a broad spectrum of opportunities, from funds to directs. The team supports portfolio managers by providing research and insights to help align investment selections with each client’s unique needs, such as liquidity requirements, risk tolerance and investment time horizons. Many investment ideas originate through collaboration with our partners — including clients, directors and our broader network — providing valuable market perspective. In addition, our investments themselves serve as an important source of market insight. Ongoing engagement with underlying managers and direct investments informs our research and enhances investment decision-making across the firm.
Equity Research
Our equity research team covers a wide range of sectors, geographies and market capitalizations to identify compelling public equity investments. Organized along broad economic sectors, each sector is covered by a team of analysts with in-depth industry knowledge who conduct deep, company-level, fundamental analysis. As longterm investors, we view the companies in which we invest as partners — we are aligned with management teams in seeking durable growth and long-term value creation. Partnership is also core to how the equity research team operates. For example, equity research analysts work closely with investigative analysts to examine complex or emerging issues more deeply, strengthening our understanding of key risks and opportunities.
Fixed Income Research
Our fixed income team covers a wide range of sectors and geographies, seeking to identify securities across corporate, municipal, securitized, sovereign and supranational issuers. The team collaborates closely with single strategy and private client, endowments and foundations portfolio managers to build portfolios that meet clients’ goals, including those related to tax, liquidity and downside protection. Partnership is central to the fixed income research process. For example, credit analysts collaborate closely with sustainable investing specialists to develop recommendations for the platform’s sustainable strategies. Investment idea generation is also highly collaborative, drawing not only on internal research but on insights from external partners, such as brokers and third-party research providers.
“A Sense Check, a Sounding Board, a Way to Ensure We’re Seeing Another Angle”
Sid Ahl and Erika Pagel both serve as Co-CIOs for our private client, endowments and foundations clients. They each also manage their own significant client relationships with distinct teams. Together, their job is to make sure the firm’s best thinking and ideas are considered for each client, to communicate and provide context around recommendations made from research analysts across the firm, and to be a sounding board for individuals and teams who need an independent perspective. Sitting in New York and Boston, respectively, Sid and Erika have to be creative in finding the time to make sure they reflect a consistent voice and one that raises the bar for investment results for each and every client in their ecosystem.