He is also the founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Akre Capital Management, FBR Focus, and other funds.
Akre grew up in Washington D.C., graduated from Blair Academy and matriculated to American University, where he started out as a premed student but later switched to BA in English literature.
Akre's and his team of analysts do intense research, and are known for their contrarian investments, most notably in the cell phone tower space during 2001–2003.
[3] Good investments are businesses that possess four characteristics: Heavily influenced by Thomas Williams Phelps book "100 to 1 in The Stock Market" and Warren Buffett's letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Akre coined the term "compounding machines" to describe businesses that are capable of compounding the shareholders' capital at high rates for long periods of time with little risk of permanent loss (not temporary quotational loss) of capital.
From that point forward they began spending more time with government, economic policy, and sustainability experts in order to "help us think about the world in general in ways that are better than we have in the past.
"[4] From December 1996 to October 2009, FBR focus had achieved annualized returns of 12.5%, which "trounced the Russell 2000 Growth index, a measure of small, fast-growing companies, by ten percentage points per year, on average," according to Kiplinger, an investment advice website, which added the company to its list of 25 recommended funds.
[5] Akre has made significant long-term investments in several public companies, including American Tower, Bandag (now Bridgestone), International Speedway, O'Reilly Automotive (the biggest independent retailer of aftermarket car parts), Ross Stores, Dollar Tree, MasterCard, Markel Corporation, Aeropostale and Penn National Gaming.