My latest book, Private Equity Deals: Lessons in investing, dealmaking, and operations from private equity professionals, arrives next week. This post shares how this book came to be, a glimpse at what’s inside, and a rebuttal of common criticisms of private equity. Read Ted’s blog here .
David Eichhorn is the CEO and Head of Investment Strategies at NISA, a $400 billion employee-owned asset manager of risk-controlled fixed income and derivative overlays that is widely respected for its highly collaborative client relationships. The firm is one of the largest derivative overlay managers in the world and the largest U.S. manager of LDI strategies. Our conversation dives into Dave’s twenty-five years at NISA, its client-centric focus, approach across fixed income and derivative str...
Today’s show is quite different from our typical show. It’s an edited replay of a conversation from six years ago with Michael Mervosh , the Executive Director of the Hero’s Journey Foundation. Michael created HJF to provide experiential opportunities for human development and transformation based on Joseph Campbell’s mythic hero’s journey. A few weeks ago, I received a FaceTime call from Michael at the tail end of the annual HJF Men’s Journey in the mountains of West Virginia. He called alongsi...
Josh Fenton is the CIO of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, an $8 billion pool he began leading earlier this year upon the retirement of Roz Hewsenian, who served as CIO for the prior twelve years. Roz was a past guest on the show, and that conversation is replayed in the feed. Our conversation follows last week’s about succession, using the live example of a successful CIO transition. We discuss Roz’s plan for her retirement, steps to evaluate and train her successor, and act...
Roz Hewsenian is the Chief Investment Officer of the $6 billion Helmsley Charitable Trust. Prior to joining Helmsley in 2010, Roz had a storied career in the industry, highlighted by her two decades of work as the consultant to CalPERS while at Wilshire Associates. Our conversation tracks Roz’s career, including lessons from teaching children, the most important rule of management, successful investment consulting, taking time off, and joining Helmsley. We then turn to her current role and cover...
As the first generation of investment firm founders approaches retirement age, the issue of succession to the next generation is increasingly at hand. We’ve seen several successful transitions of firms, many that haven’t survived their founders, and an entire sub-industry arise to help facilitate generational transfers across GP stakes, public offerings, and structured transactions. With both managers and allocators thinking more about the inevitability of succession, I thought it would be helpf...
Sarah Samuels is the Head of Investment Manager Research at NEPC where she oversees teams across public equities, credit, hedge funds, and private markets for the $1.5 trillion investment advisory juggernaut. Prior to joining NEPC three years ago, Sarah worked at the senior level of both a top notch endowment and a public pension fund. She sought to bring the best of both worlds to her role at NEPC. Our conversation covers Sarah’s early career investing, time in the allocator seat at Mass PRIM a...
Todd Simkin is an Associate Director at Susquehanna International Group, a global quantitative trading firm comprised solely of internal capital that is known for its rigorous analytical approach to decision-making. Todd is also the CEO of Susquehanna Re, his latest role in a 27-year tenure at SIG that has spanned trading, strategic initiatives, and trader education. Our conversation covers the history of SIG alongside Todd’s roles, trader development, the art and science of trading, risk manage...
Jeff Assaf is the founder and CIO of ICG Advisors, which oversees $7B in assets for a highly curated group of 80 client families. While Jeff keeps his client names confidential, ICG manages money for a roster of successful athletes, entertainers, and business professionals with a combination of tailored investment solutions and white-glove service, many of whom he has served for decades. Our conversation covers Jeff’s path to investment allocation through Oppenheimer, Bear Stearns, and eventuall...
Rob Small and Anil Seetharam are Managing Directors and founding members of the Stockbridge team at Berkshire Partners, a $5B concentrated public equity manager that sits inside the $20B private equity firm. Unlike many public equity strategies at private equity firms, Stockbridge works closely and collaboratively with Berkshire’s private equity team on its investment research and has attracted an enviable client roster of some of the most respected allocators in the world. Our conversation cove...
Jennifer Prosek is the founder and CEO of Prosek Partners, a leading marketing and communications firm that for 30 years has helped the world’s top brands navigate what comes next. In asset management, Prosek’s clients oversee $60 trillion and comprise a who’s who in private and public markets. Jen is a popular past guest on this show from her first appearance five years ago and second when she shared her thoughts on navigating the pandemic. Our conversation updates Jen’s thoughts on the emergin...
Jennifer Prosek is the founder and CEO of Prosek Partners, a leading international public relations and financial communications consultancy with offices in New York, London, Los Angeles and Connecticut. Prosek Partners ranks among the top 10 independent public relations firms in the U.S., and among the top financial communications consultancies. The firm has been listed as an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company for nine years running. Jen is also a two-time author. Our conversation covers the foi...
Today’s show is the second in an ongoing mini-series discussing Training Grounds, organizations that have developed industry leaders. The first episode discussed Carnegie Corporation, where over a dozen years 8 of the 17 investment professionals that came through the doors became CIOs at Carnegie or other institutions. Bain Capital is one of the world’s largest private alternative investment firms. The firm was founded 40 years ago with a half dozen team members managing a $37 million growth equ...
Charles Duhigg is a celebrated writer for The New Yorker and author of bestseller "The Power of Habit." His latest book, "Supercommunicators," describes how to effectively communicate in conversation. Our conversation covers Charles’ path to writing business stories and personal books and turn to his latest tour du force. We discuss the science behind connection, three types of conversations, methods to become a better communicator, and tools to navigate challenging conversations. Charles’ book ...
Ben Hunt is the creator of Epsilon Theory and co-founder of Second Foundation Partners, where he writes and invests through the lens of narratives, or in his words “If a price moves, it is because a human told themselves a story.” Before turning to investing twenty years ago, Ben was a tenured political science professor and founder of two technology companies. He has been studying trends using what we now call big data ever since his first book about predicting international conflict in 1997. O...
I’ve been thinking about what it takes for allocators to lower the fee burden charged by managers on the path to increasing net returns. Read Ted’s blog here .
Yann Robard is the founder of Dawson Partners, a leading global alternative asset manager overseeing $20 billion that provides innovative structured solutions to the private markets. Formed initially as Whitehorse Liquidity Partners and rebranded as Dawson, both names are inspired by Yann’s 1,000 km bicycle journey in the Canadian Arctic that led to his becoming a trailblazer in the market. Our conversation covers Yann's entrepreneurial career path, including fourteen years in the formative stag...
Please join us for our first Capital Allocators University for Investor Relations and Business Development Professionals. Learn more and sign up here .
Graham Weaver is the managing partner of Alpine Investors, a $17 billion people-driven private equity firm that invests in software and services businesses. Graham founded Alpine on the belief that exceptional people create exceptional businesses. Alpine’s PeopleFirst approach includes hiring, training, and placing an army of CEOs in its portfolio companies. The strategy has led Alpine to be recognized by Prequin as the most consistent top-performing private equity fund manager. Our conversation...
Mo Haghbin is the Head of Multi-Asset Solutions at Invesco, where he develops and manages asset allocation strategies and portfolio solutions for $88 billion of client assets within the $1.7 trillion juggernaut. Our conversation covers Mo's journey to finance and his path to a leadership role at Invesco. We discuss Invesco’s solutions-based approach that canvasses every type of asset pool and structure and focuses first on top-down strategic asset allocation and tactical positioning, and only la...
Anne - Marie Fink is the Head of Private Markets and Funds Alpha at the State of Wisconsin Investment Board or SWIB, which manages $140 billion of pension funds in the state. SWIB is not your typical U.S. pension fund manager. It invests with outstanding governance, alignment with beneficiaries, delegated authority, a competitively compensated team, and cutting-edge strategies, all of which have contributed to a fully funded plan. Anne - Marie joined SWIB to lead its external manager efforts fou...
My last post, The Investment Office Playbook: What Managers Don’t See , discussed part of what happens inside an investment office that managers don’t see but that significantly influences the cadence of capital deployed to managers. Of course, there are two sides to every coin. This post discusses what allocators don’t see when a manager chooses to grow. Read Ted’s blog here ....
Alexis Ohanian is the General Partner and Founder of Seven Seven Six, an early-stage venture capital firm with $1 billion under management that he describes as a technology company that deploys venture capital. Alexis was the co-founder of Reddit, one of the most popular online forums in the world, which he sold 18 months after its 2005 launch for $10 million and returned as Executive Chair in 2014 to help lead the turnaround of the business. In between and since, he has invested in early-stage ...
Dan Tennebaum is the Managing Director at India Capital, a thirty-year-old investment firm focusing on public equities in India. Dan moved to the country twenty-five years ago and spent time in the start-up world and venture capital before pivoting to the public markets in 2007. Our conversation covers Dan's path from a U.S. Midwesterner to India, the challenges of venture capital investing in the country, and the case for public equities. We turn to India Capital’s perspective on sourcing, rese...
Brett Barakett is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Tremblant Capital, a 23-year-old long-short equity and long-only firm focused on deep fundamental stock research with a senior team that has been together for at least sixteen years. Brett has invested through rising and falling tides in the industry, ups and downs in fund flows, and alongside friends and peers who have since retired. Yet he keeps skating to where the puck is going. Our conversation covers Brett’s path to launching Tr...
Cliff Asness is the Founder and CIO at AQR, an investment management firm at the intersection of financial theory and practice that oversees $100 billion in assets. He is famously intelligent, comical, and irreverent, all wrapped into one. Our conversation covers Cliff's journey from studying market efficiency under Eugene Fama to capitalizing on market inefficiencies at AQR. We discuss regime changes in factors, difficult periods for performance and AQR’s business, research innovation, machine ...
3G Capital’s buyout of Burger King may be the most successful private equity deal you’ve never heard about. Over the last fourteen years, or the length of a typical private equity fund, 3G turned a $1 billion investment into $28 billion in value. The annual dividends from the investment accruing to 3G today are around 70% of its invested capital. The deal is one of the highest earning buyouts ever. 3G is an organization with a storied history. Founded by Jorge Paolo Lemann, Carlos Alberto Sicupi...
Alex Abell is a Managing Partner at RCP Advisors, which at $14 billion of committed capital, is one of the largest firms focused exclusively on lower-middle market buyouts. Alex has spent twenty-three years in the business, starting on the LP side, building Atlas Diligence – a research and advisory platform focused on advanced analytics, and then merging Atlas with RCP a decade ago. Today, he helps manage RCP’s research efforts, its customized solutions, and advisory services. Our conversation c...
Letitia Johnson is the CIO of Amherst College, where she manages the school's $4 billion endowment. After thirteen years working with twenty-five clients and attending over 1,000 Investment Committee meetings at Cambridge Associates, Letitia developed a view about investing that differs from many similar pools of capital and has applied that view over the last five years. Our conversation covers the subtleties of managing an endowment with a concentrated, bottom-up manager-selected approach for ...
David Morehead is the CIO at Baylor University, where he oversees the $2.2 billion endowment. David came to Baylor thirteen years ago after an eighteen-year investment career that spanned every aspect of public markets investing. He created an approach to investing at Baylor that is quite different from others in the seat. David recently started sharing his insightful perspectives on the craft on Twitter/X under the handle @CIO_Baylor. Our conversation covers David’s background and path to Baylo...
