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The founder of Orbis and current Chairman, Allan Gray, started his investment career in 1965 with Fidelity Investments in Boston, culminating in his assuming responsibility for the Fidelity Capital Fund which was over US$500 million at the time. While fellow veteran Fidelity fund managers Peter Lynch and Gerry Tsai became well known in US investment circles, Allan Gray left Fidelity in 1973 and moved half way around the world to Cape Town, South Africa, where he built a similar reputation within that market.
In 1974, he formed what is now the top performing and largest privately owned manager of pension fund assets in South Africa, Allan Gray Limited, managing over $23 billion at 31 December 2008. The firm's equity portfolios have beaten the local South African stockmarket returns in 27 of the past 34 years with annualised outperformance of 11 percentage points.
In 1988, Allan Gray and his son William, now President of the Orbis Group, opened a global investment advisory firm in London. Bermuda-based Orbis Investment Management Limited was formed in 1989 and the first three Orbis mutual funds were launched on 1 January 1990. Both Allan and William Gray are resident in Bermuda.
Orbis has grown from $67 million under management at the beginning of 1990 to approximately $15 billion as at 31 December 2008. Orbis now offers a broad range of equity-based products including a family of equity funds, as well as six related absolute return funds for non-U.S. investors. Orbis now has approximately 225 staff located in its offices between Hamilton, Bermuda; London, UK; Sydney, Australia; Seoul, Korea; San Francisco, United States and Vancouver, Canada performing research, trading, IT and administrative functions.