Smith never ran the TP pension fund. Cedar Rock did. Smith's involvement was limited to appointing them, and requesting a few stocks be divested (eg: He asked them not to own newspapers). IMO, Smith more or less got religion from Cedar Rock. To my knowledge, there's no real record of him ever talking about quality-growth investing prior to his engagement of Cedar Rock. Cedar Rock was founded by Andy Brown, who used to run the Morgan Stanley Global Brands fund. As an aside, that fund is still around today, and offers a decent look at what this kind of concentrated, low turnover quality-growth investing can look like across several market cycles.