ClearBridge Fund Best as Patience Pays: Riskless Return

ClearBridge Investments’ Richard Freeman followed drug company Alza Corp. for 28 years before buying shares in 1999, when a failed acquisition by a larger company sent shares plunging. Two years later, Johnson & Johnson bought Alza for triple the price the fund paid.

Patience and a contrarian view helped Freeman and co-manager Evan Bauman steer Legg Mason Inc.’s $7.6 billion ClearBridge Aggressive Growth Fund to a risk-adjusted performance of 4.3 percent over the past three years, the best of 34 large funds that buy stocks of U.S. companies with higher-than-average growth, according to the BLOOMBERG RISKLESS RETURN RANKING. The ClearBridge fund returned 45 percent after price swings since it started in 1983, the highest among the six peer funds that have been in existence since then.