Matthew McLennan
Head of the Global Value Team at First Eagle Investments (New York), overseeing ~$130 billion across global value, international value, and US value strategies. Joined First Eagle in 2008 after 14 years at Goldman Sachs; handpicked by investing legend Jean-Marie Eveillard as his successor. Profiled in Richer, Wiser, Happier (2021) in the chapter “The Resilient Investor.”
McLennan’s investment philosophy centres on three interlocking principles: variegation (intentional non-uniformity in portfolio construction, as opposed to statistical diversification); scarcity (seeking businesses with dominant market positions or scarce real assets); and patience (holding positions for a decade on average, trusting that arithmetic eventually plays out). He holds ~15% of the portfolio in gold and cash as ballast, deployable in crises.
His intellectual influences span Seneca, Iain McGilchrist (The Matter With Things), Peter Matthiessen (The Snow Leopard), Steve Wolfram (A New Kind of Science), and Jean-Marie Eveillard (who taught him that “gold is not a commodity — gold is money”). He has spent years underperforming during the US growth-stock bull run of the 2010s and views that period as confirming rather than contradicting his philosophy.
Appearances
- Matthew McLennan on Variegation, Positional Assets, and Resilient Wealth (Richer, Wiser, Happier, 2025)
Related
- Positional Assets — core concept introduced here
- Value Investing — scarcity + margin of safety as McLennan’s variant
- William Green — interviewer; senior advisor to First Eagle’s global value team since 2021
- Knightian Uncertainty — irreducible uncertainty as the starting premise of McLennan’s philosophy