Alex Williams
Berkshire Williams was established by Alex Williams after discovering that a retirement savings plan from a major financial insitution had sigificantly underperformed against a market index, despite presenting positive-looking reports that created the impression of growth.
This was a real wake-up call for me. As someone who has worked in the Industry my whole life, it was a shock to discover the truth about the way some investment companies operate…fees are simply extracted from savers and paid out as sales commissions to agents and handed out as dividends to the investment company's owners whilst delivering below market returns.
Millions of savers in the UK are receiving poor returns and forgoing tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds in potential savings due to fees, poor asset allocation and underperformance. This reality is often obscured by subtle deception including the use of meaningless, industry‑defined performance benchmarks, which allow managers to claim so‑called “outperformance” while still delivering returns far below stock market.
This is a theme that Warren Buffett has spoken about for decades, including in Berkshire Hathaway's 2013 shareholder letter, where he states –
My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard’s.) I believe the trust’s long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors – whether pension funds, institutions or individuals – who employ high-fee managers.
Alex Williams is also an independent researcher and journalist, operating under the nom de plume Alex Kriel. He has spent around thirty years in the investment business, including roles in hedge funds and pension funds. His most recent corporate position was with a Dutch pension fund manager overseeing approximately EUR 600 billion.