Columbus Investment Advisory Inc.

Columbus Investment Advisory, Inc. provides discretionary portfolio management for individuals and families, with a client base that includes high-net-worth individuals, trusts, individual retirement accounts and charitable foundations. The firm also offers a limited amount of financial consulting to small business owners and prospective business owners on matters such as acquisitions, capital expenditures, investment analysis and strategic planning.

Investment decisions are driven by proprietary, fundamental research conducted on a company-by-company basis; the firm looks for stocks trading at least 20% below internal target prices and favors names with valuation and balance-sheet metrics such as below-market P/E and P/CF, debt/equity under 50%, growing cash flow and rising dividends. Portfolios are typically constructed with 30–40 stocks (individual positions generally capped near 3–4% of a portfolio) and an average holding period of about 3–5 years, while fixed-income allocations emphasize individual, short-to-intermediate maturity bonds (generally 2–10 years) and laddered maturities.

Several operational and compliance practices distinguish the firm from many peers: it prefers individual bonds over bond funds for transparency and known maturities, does not participate in soft-dollar arrangements, and does not vote client proxies (clients receive proxies directly from custodians). Its Code of Ethics requires pre-approval of personal trades and imposes a five-business-day lag between client and associate transactions, and the firm notes it can be deemed to have custody due to fee deductions and standing letters of authorization.