Our Firm
Founded in 1994 by Daniel S. Och, Och-Ziff Capital Management Group is one of the largest institutional alternative asset managers in the world, with approximately $29.8 billion in assets under management as of May 1, 2012.
Our Historical Assets Under Management(1)
(1) Includes amounts invested by the Company, its Executive Managing Directors and certain other related parties for which the Company charged no management fees and received no incentive income for the periods presented. Amounts presented in this graph are not the amounts used to calculate management fees and incentive income for the respective periods. For the period from 2001 through 2004, total assets under management do not include assets externally managed by an affiliated investment adviser pursuant to a joint venture arrangement.
(2) Estimate as of May 1, 2012.
Our funds seek to generate consistent, positive, absolute returns across market cycles with low volatility compared to the equity markets. We have always limited our use of leverage to generate investment performance and we emphasize preservation of capital. We serve the investment needs of a diversified institutional base, providing asset management services through our hedge funds and other alternative investment vehicles, which pursue a broad range of global investment opportunities.
We focus on establishing long-term relationships with a global base of institutional investors, which today includes many of the largest, most sophisticated investors in the world. These include pension funds, fund-of-funds, foundations and endowments, corporations and other institutions, private banks and family offices.
Our fund investors value our funds' consistent performance history, our global investing expertise and our diverse investment strategies, combined with our strong focus on risk management and sustaining a robust operational infrastructure. Our funds make investments in many regions around the world with a breadth that we believe is offered by few other alternative asset management firms.
Our assets under management are generally invested on a multi-strategy basis, across multiple geographies, although certain of our funds focus on specific sectors, strategies and geographies. Our primary investment strategies are convertible and derivative arbitrage, corporate credit, long/short equity special situations, merger arbitrage, private investments and structured credit.
We have built an experienced investment management team around the world. As of March 31, 2012, we had 433 employees worldwide, including 127 investment professionals and 17 Executive Managing Directors, working from our headquarters in New York City and offices in London, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Beijing. Our London office houses our European investment team and our Hong Kong office houses the majority of our Asian investment team.
Our business was built on certain fundamental elements that we believe are differentiating competitive strengths. They continue to define Och-Ziff today.
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Alignment of Interests
We structure our business to align our firm's interests with those of the investors in our funds. Investments by our Executive Managing Directors and employees comprise a meaningful portion of our total assets under management. Additionally, all of our Executive Managing Directors have an ownership interest in the firm and receive distributions that are directly tied to the firm's profitability. -
Employee and Executive Managing Director Equity Ownership
We have a history of hiring highly talented and experienced employees across all areas of our business, and developing them into senior roles as Managing Directors and Executive Managing Directors. As of March 31, 2012, we had 17 Executive Managing Directors, each of whom has an ownership interest in the firm, and 49 Managing Directors whose compensation structure includes receiving a portion of any bonus compensation in equity that vests over time. We believe the number of senior personnel we have, and their breadth of equity ownership, sets us apart in our industry and ensures the continuity and stability of our firm.
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Team-Based Culture
We evaluate Executive Managing Director and employee contributions and have designed our compensation structure based on a "one-firm" approach, which encourages internal cooperation and the sharing of ideas. We are a global organization and we have fostered a culture that allows us to allocate capital and evaluate investment opportunities on a firm-wide basis, focusing on the best ideas and opportunities available. This collaborative approach emphasizes the success of our firm as a whole. -
Global Presence
Our ability to opportunistically invest worldwide is an important element of diversifying our portfolios and managing risk. Our dedicated and experienced investment professionals operate from our offices globally and have a long history of investing on an international scale. -
Synergies among Investment Strategies
Our funds invest across a broad range of asset classes and geographies via our multi-strategy model. Our investment professionals have extensive experience and many are specialized by strategy, industry sector or asset class. This fosters consistent interaction among the investment professionals across our strategies and creates synergies that add to our market insight and ability to identify attractive investment opportunities. -
Focus on Infrastructure
Since our firm's inception, we have focused on building a robust infrastructure with an emphasis on strong financial, operational and compliance-related controls. As a public company, we are required to identify and document key processes and controls, which are subject to independent review. Additionally, we have added a number of independent, third-party processes to our fund operations that provide independent information to our fund investors. -
Transparency
We believe that our fund investors should be provided with qualitative and quantitative information about our investment process, operational procedures and portfolio exposures in order to understand and evaluate our investment performance. We provide our fund investors with comprehensive reporting about each portfolio on a regular basis, and our senior management team and portfolio managers regularly meet with them to address their questions.
The long-term interests of our fund investors are central to the way in which we approach and invest in our business. Our growth strategy is based on expanding our hedge funds and alternative investment vehicles as well as our geographic presence. We believe our focus on delivering consistent, positive, risk-adjusted returns to our fund investors by capitalizing on our competitive strengths and the investment opportunities we see globally also serves the best interests of our public company shareholders.