Founder's Letter

Dear Friends,

We formed Iron Capital in 2003 when I left Invesco Retirement and partnered with Larry Gray to start a firm that conducted business in what I believe is the right way. Iron Capital is more than a firm to me; it’s my dream. I truly have a passion for investing and for helping clients build their futures. Yet as I worked my way up in the investment industry, I was constantly disturbed by two major flaws: the industry is rife with conflicts of interest, and the end investor often has no access to competent advice or guidance. The final straw came as I witnessed too many people lose half or more of their assets in the bear market of 2000-2002. I felt I had to do something to help, and from that desire, Iron Capital was born – a firm where investors like you can get direct access to expert investment counsel.

Wall Street is broken. I believed that in 2003, and it proved true in 2008. Investors are tired of not knowing where their money really is. They are tired of the layers of fees and hidden expenses. They are tired of being sold products from clerks who claim to be advisors, and tired of trusting people who don’t know what they are doing and don’t have the client’s best interest at heart.

To fix it, we must get back to basics. We must move away from playing the market and buying Wall Street’s products and get back to investing in companies – real companies that produce real products and create real jobs.

Investors want to do business with a firm they can trust, where they know the principals and have direct access to the people actually managing money. They want to do business with a firm that puts its clients’ interest first by taking a fiduciary role.

That firm is Iron Capital and this is our story.

Thank you,

Charles E. Osborne Co-founder and Managing Director

Mission & Values

Mission: Provide clients with direct access to expert investment counsel.

CORE VALUES

Trust: Trust is the cornerstone of our firm. As investment professionals, our reputation and our clients’ trust are our most important assets. Clients must trust their advisers to be honest and act with integrity, to be experts in their profession, and to put the client’s best interest before their own. Such trust is ultimately earned over time, and at Iron Capital our guiding principles and our structure assure your trust is well-placed.

Independence: One cannot serve two masters. We work only for our clients, have only their best interests at heart, and do not accept any revenue other than the fees agreed upon by our clients. All investment decisions are made by professionals with real investment analysis and management experience who have earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, not by untrained sales reps, stock brokers or financial planners. Our independent structure not only ensures our clients are insulated from the conflicts of interest that plague our industry, but also affords us direct decision-making ability for managing clients portfolios in times of crisis and opportunity alike.

Service: We are passionate about providing meaningful service to our clients, to our community, and to our profession. All client accounts are separately managed, and while we allocate your investments based on proprietary models, we are not blindly using the models as static vehicles. We’ve stripped away the layers between you and the investment decision-makers, giving you direct access to the managers handling your funds, so that our investment team can tailor your portfolio to your specific circumstances. Moreover, our own funds are invested alongside yours, fortifying our laser focus on asset management and ensuring our personal interests are aligned with your goal of achieving the strongest performance possible. Externally, all Iron Capital employees are involved with at least one community and one professional organization of personal importance to them, as we strongly believe in giving back to the communities we serve.

Living Our Values

In our mission to provide clients with direct access to expert investment counsel, we are driven passionately by our Core Values of Trust, Independence and Service, bolstered by our Guiding Principles of Honor, Wisdom, Excellence and Discipline. Here are a few examples of how our organization, business decisions and daily actions reveal that we are truly living our values.

LIVING OUR VALUES: TRUST
Our organizational structure assures our honesty on all fronts. We never take custody of your assets; instead they are held at the financial institution of your choosing, and we can access that account only to initiate trades and deduct our fees. You will get two sets of statements, one from the custodian and one from Iron Capital, to ensure everything matches. We have a zero tolerance policy on breaches of our code of ethics.

LIVING OUR VALUES: INDEPENDENCE
As the financial crisis reached critical mass during the fall of 2008, Iron Capital’s independent structure afforded us insider access to industry insights and the ability to move swiftly to adjust client portfolios to insulate them from the crisis as best we could. Some of the actions we took were:

• Wrote six unscheduled client communications during the height of the crisis explaining what was happening, what we were doing about it and what it meant for our clients.
• Conducted due diligence on all of our clients’ custodial platforms.
• Verified holdings in all Stable Value and cash option investments to ascertain any exposure to distressed debt issues.
• Transferred all individual clients’ money market accounts to the money market fund with government-issued securities prior to the Treasury’s guarantee of money market assets.
• Confirmed client assets were insured against custodial failure.
• Had an exclusive conference call with AIG Retirement’s senior management to determine the financial strength of the company and safety of clients’ assets.

LIVING OUR VALUES: SERVICE
At Iron Capital, service has a different connotation than it does at many firms. For us, service is more than white-glove wealth management or service for service’s sake. It means investment teams that take time to truly understand a client’s individual circumstances and customize the client’s portfolio based on those insights. It means not just identifying which of our proprietary models best fits the client’s profile, but then tailoring our models specifically to the client’s goals. It means when a crisis or opportunity arises, our client service teams and investment managers work together to adjust client portfolios accordingly and then let clients know what’s been done and why. It means regular communication and no surprises. Should we reach a critical mass that would prohibit such customized service, we will close the firm to new business to protect our existing clients’ interests.