Towle & Co

Towle & Co. manages public equity portfolios on a discretionary basis for private and institutional investors, offering separately managed accounts, wrap programs, model delivery, private investment funds, and registered investment companies such as ETFs. Its client base includes high‑net‑worth individuals as well as pooled investment vehicles and institutional investors, including state and municipal entities.

The firm’s flagship Towle Value Strategy is a deep‑value, small‑capitalization equity approach that combines proprietary quantitative screens with fundamental, bottom‑up analysis to identify out‑of‑favor or cyclical companies. Towle also offers I/O strategies that emphasize strategic asset allocation using selected ETFs (with an optional “Outlier Investments” sleeve) and generally manages accounts on a substantially similar basis across participating accounts while accommodating client‑specific guidelines.

Towle’s profile includes several features that are uncommon among similar team firms: it is registered as a commodity pool operator with certain employees registered with the NFA, it serves as adviser and general partner to private funds and as sub‑adviser to a proprietary ETF (which in March 2026 acquired the assets of a Towle mutual fund), and it has used performance‑based fee arrangements in at least one partnership now in liquidation. The firm also discloses practices that can create conflicts—such as investing client assets in affiliated registered funds (with specific billing practices), use of soft‑dollar research arrangements, and compensated third‑party referral arrangements under the SEC Marketing Rule—and describes policies and disclosures intended to manage those conflicts.