Allan Gray may have been a "not have to style of company", but once you get over a certain fund size (R5 billion and more) and you've got limitations on exposure to different sectors then you sort of have to become a "have to style of company". There was an interesting piece of research done that concluded that for the JSE, funds over R5 billion become limited in terms of shares they can invest in due to lack of liquidity. Their conclusion was that due to these liquidity constraints they effectively become index trackers and the biggest contributor to investment decisions becomes liquidity of the share they are looking at. I'm still hoping to get a job like that at AG one day - a share analyst - all you need is one spreadsheet with one column which works out which shares you'll be able to buy based virtually on liquidity. Any non-liquid stocks they invest in they face the risk of "moving the market" just to get in and out.