Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry

Latest Episodes:

Ash Williams – Florida SBA's Reigning Chief (Capital Allocator, EP.104) Jul 08, 2019

Show notes

Ash Williams is the Executive Director and CIO of the Florida State Board of Administration, where he oversees $200 billion in assets for the State of Florida including one of the largest public pension funds in the U.S. He is as highly regarded as they come, and among other accolades, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from CIO Magazine in 2017.

Ash began his career serving the State of Florida as a staff assistant to two House speakers, as Chief of Staff to a former Governor and Comptroller of the State, and as Executive Director of the SBA. He left for a decade on Wall Street and returned after the global financial crisis to help resurrect the state's assets.

Our conversation covers Ash's early experience in Florida legislature, the SBA in the 1990s, moving from the public sector to Wall Street, and returning in the thick of the financial crisis. We discuss many aspects of managing a large pools of assets, including a six-year effort to modernize the compensation scheme, asset allocation, blending active and passive managers and internal and external fund management, managing around political interests, communicating expectations and transparency, character, proxy voting, private equity, hedge funds, and the process of selecting managers.

Learn More Discuss show and Read the Transcript Join Ted's mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com Join the Capital Allocators Forum Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast

Sam Sicilia – Seizing on a Long Time Horizon at HostPlus (EP.103) Jul 01, 2019

Show notes

Sam Sicilia is the Chief Investment Officer of HostPlus, Australia's AUZ 37 billion ($25B USD) Superannuation Fund. Sam joined HostPlus in 2008 after a storied career in academia and the finance industry stretching back to the early 1990s. During that time, he held senior roles, both in Australia and internationally, consulting at Russell Investments, managing assets at Bank of Ireland, and consulting with Frontier Investment Consulting and Towers Perrin.

Our conversation starts with Sam's mathematics training and turns to his work over the last decade at HostPlus, covering the Fund's long time horizon, his strategy to take advantage of that horizon, infrastructure investing for downside protection, private equity, venture capital in Australia, public equity focusing on people, hedge funds as a liquidity buffer, and working with a Board.

Martin Whittaker – JUST Capital (First Meeting, EP.02) Jun 24, 2019

Show notes

Martin Whittaker is the founding CEO of JUST Capital, a non-profit created by a group of concerned, influential leaders, including Deepak Chopra and Paul Tudor Jones. JUST Capital is an independent research organization thanks ranks companies on the issues Americans care about most, with a mission to build a more just marketplace that better reflects the true priorities of the American people. Last year, it launched the JUST ETF in partnership with Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

Our conversation covers with Martin's history of following the money that ultimately led to his position at JUST, defining a "just company", engaging the public in the polling process, engaging companies in the results, applications of the research including the JUST ETF, common characteristics of companies that rank highly, the impact of the polls on companies, application to private companies, and new initiatives.

Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) Jun 17, 2019

Show notes

Jon Wertheim is a sports journalist and author who has a passion for psychology and economics. He is the Executive Editor at Sports Illustrated, where he has been a full-time staff member since 1996. Jon also is a contributing correspondent on 60 Minutes and an analyst for the Tennis Channel at the four Majors. He is the author of ten books including Stokes of Genius about the Federer-Nadal rivalry, the New York Times bestsellerScorecasting, and more recently, This Is Your Brain on Sports.

Our conversation spans across sports, behavior and decision making, discussing Jon's path to a career in sports journalism, insider perspective on tennis, role of luck, cycles in basketball strategy, loss aversion, job preservation, omission bias, sports gambling, the business of sports, and lessons from interviewing.

Jon moves with ease across sports, investing and psychology, and the parallels with his anecdotes and the world of investing are both entertaining and readily apparent.

Capital Allocators Presents: First Meeting with Ted Seides Jun 10, 2019

Show notes

I'm excited to announce the launch of a spinoff of capital allocators called first meeting. First meeting episodes will be conversations with leading investment managers across asset classes. First meeting will seek to catalyze a step change improvement in the due diligence process by sharing conversations that replicate a first meeting and allocator might have with the manager. We'll help both managers and allocators save time from repeating the same meeting over and over again, create scale in transparency, and increase the efficiency of communication.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy – O'Shaughnessy Asset Management (First Meeting, EP.01) Jun 10, 2019

Show notes

Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, the host of the Invest Like the Best podcast, and a great friend. Patrick's podcast and widely read monthly mailing list of books, available at investorfieldguide.com, have made him a celebrity of sorts in the investing world. Those familiar with his voice will already know how wide his curious mind travels, but I image far fewer know much about his daily investing activities.

Our conversation begins with Patrick's early start in the business and discovered passion for research. We turn to investing at OSAM, covering four core quantitative factors, how those factors work, the research process to dive deeper into each factor and explore new ones, machine learning, differentiated portfolio construction, and the impact of quants on the market. We then turn to Patrick's experience as a podcaster, discussing his conceptual learning loop, lessons from interviewing, and the ways he has applied lessons from the podcast to OSAM's asset management business. We close by discussing investing in external managers, including a great nugget on probing quantitative strategies.

Patrick and I both finished this conversation feeling that we had just scratched the surface, which might be fodder for a Part B down the road. Regardless, I'm indebted to Patrick for being the catalyst behind the creation of Capital Allocators two years ago, and it was my great pleasure to get him on the other side of the microphone.

Khe Hy – Radical Shift from Investing to Purpose (Capital Allocators, EP.101) Jun 03, 2019

Show notes

Khe Hy rose to be one of the youngest Managing Directors at Blackrock's hedge fund of funds business. In his 30s he left the industry to explore what would come next. His path led to creating the RadReads blog and coaching about facing fears and insecurities attached to the relationship of psychology and money. Khe has since been dubbed the "Oprah for Millenials" by CNN and "Wall Street Guru" by Bloomberg.

Our conversation starts with Khe's career on Wall Street evaluating mortgage derivative hedge fund strategies, reaching his lifelong career goals, and then leaving it behind. Ky discusses his path and asks questions that provoke an exploration of the value of money, including the power of asking "Why?", what to do if you won the lottery, how much to leave behind for your children, the marginal utility of money, and lessons on staying the course on an entrepreneurial path.

Khe's real-time journey tackles issues that many in our profession face when they take a moment to reflect on their lives. The lessons reminded me of my conversation with HBS Professor Tom DeLong, which I've replayed on the feed.

REPLAY - Thomas DeLong – Authentic Leadership (Capital Allocators, EP.18) Jun 03, 2019

Show notes

Tom DeLong is a renown expert in organizational behavior, leadership, and human development of high performance professionals, the so called "soft skills" often dismissed in the asset management business. After starting an academic career under the wing of Stephen Covey, Tom found himself recruited by John Mack to work alongside him to develop a positive culture at Morgan Stanley. After eight years in the trenches, he returned to academia as a professor at Harvard Business School, where he has remained the past twenty years.

Unlike most of us, Tom's resume and achievements are unusually difficult to locate online or elsewhere. It was a sign of things to come in our fascinating conversation, which is simultaneously a master class in authentic leadership and a live case study in self-exploration with Tom as his own protagonist. Tom is exactly the type of person he has studied, and strives to be the type of leader he promotes.

We discuss the meaning of work, the importance of feedback, the ways high performing professionals derail themselves, the difference between your image and your essence, the omnipresence of insecurity in high achievers, and some techniques to foster deeper conversation in relationships.

REPLAY - David "Bull" Gurfein - Interdisciplinary Lessons from the Marines (Capital Allocators, EP.10) May 27, 2019

Show notes

David Gurfein is a decorated Marine Corps Combat veteran whose nickname "Bull" fits the bill. Enlisting at age 17, Bull drove tanks and was an honor graduate from Officer Candidate School while attending Syracuse University. Upon graduation from college, he accepted a commission as a Marine 2nd Lieutenant. Over the subsequent eleven years, Bull served as a combat Infantry Officer, leading Marines in the jungles of Panama, the deserts of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and on the fence-line at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He left active duty to earn his MBA at Harvard in 2000, where he was Co-President of his class.

Bull started a business career after graduate school; however, when the U.S. was attacked on 9/11, Bull voluntarily returned to active duty. He saw combat action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and served as a Congressional Liaison for the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and the Special Operations Command.

With a daughter on the way and 25 years of service under his belt, Bull retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. Since then, he has applied his leadership and management experience to the business world, focusing on organizational design and business development. His leadership training program, entitled WHOOPASS, has positively impacted start-ups and Fortune 500 companies alike.

Oh, and he took a break from that in 2016 to run for U.S. Congress.

Our conversation discusses principles of leadership, management, and resource allocation, alongside colorful stories of success and failure. Bull's frameworks have clear applicability to anyone overseeing an investment process.

Tim Recker - Concentration at the James Irvine Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.100) May 20, 2019

Show notes

Tim Recker is the CIO of the $2.4 billion James Irvine Foundation. He joined the foundation in 2016 after spending a decade in private equity and real assets for the University of California Regents, four years overseeing Alternatives at the Michigan Retirement System, and his early years at GE Asset Management

Our conversation covers Tim's career path, the culture and structure at GE and Michigan Retirement, and co-investments at UC Regents. We then turn to the intricacies of managing a highly concentrated portfolio of managers at Irvine, including effective governance. flexibility, team structure, due diligence, and decision making. We close with Tim's perspectives on hedge funds, real estate and fixed income, and the tradeoffs in preparing for a downturn.

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