DEARBORN PARTNERS LLC

That masking effect matters here because the real story is breadth, not direction. Among the 50 largest positions in Dearborn's $1.8 billion book, 42 were trimmed in share count this quarter and only 4 were added to — a near-universal pullback, not a handful of tactical sells. Total reported assets fell from $2.0 billion to $1.8 billion over the same stretch, across a full portfolio of 287 holdings. Whatever the driver — client redemptions, a deliberate de-risking, a rebalance toward cash — the breadth argues against reading any single trim as a view on that one company.

Where Dearborn did make sharp, idiosyncratic decisions was at the very edge of the book: four full exits swapped for four new positions of almost identical size. Merck ($23.2 million), Broadridge Financial ($20.6 million), Jack Henry & Associates ($18.7 million) and Ares Management ($17.4 million) were sold outright; Ecolab ($21.1 million), Caterpillar ($20.3 million), EOG Resources ($16.5 million) and General Dynamics ($15.2 million) took their place. The pairing sizes are close enough that this reads like a deliberate one-for-one swap of conviction rather than a random set of sells and buys — industrials and energy names replacing a payments-processing name and a healthcare name, with no obvious single sector thesis tying the four together.