Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry

On today's manager meeting, Mario Therrien speaks with Leda Braga. Mario is a two-time past guest on the show and is the Head of Investment Funds and External Management at Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ). CDPQ oversees $300 billion for pension funds in the province of Quebec. Leda Braga is the founder and CEO of Systematica Investments, a $10 billion hedge fund with a quantitative a...

Three years ago, Paul Black from WCM Investment Management joined me on the show for a very popular conversation. At the time, WCM managed $25 billion in global growth equities out of the limelight in Laguna Beach, CA.  Last year, I had a second conversation with WCM with Mike Trigg, the Portfolio Manager of its Focused Growth International strategy. Mike discussed the colorful history of the firm...

You may remember my popular first meeting from a few years ago with Paul Black of WCM, then a $25 billion asset manager in Laguna Beach, CA. Since then, WCM has gone up and to the right in every way, they sold a minority piece of the business to Natixis, continue to put big numbers on the board, and have grown to north of $66 billion, defying the fade of active management outflows. My guest on tod...

Paul Black is Co-CEO and portfolio manager at WCM Investment Management, a $26 billion manager of global equities that he joined when it was a $200 million boutique in 1989.  With so much of the institutional world, including my own training, focused on value investing, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about a large, high performing growth stock manager located in a non-descript building in Lag...

On today's show, Roz Hewsenian interviews Jan Garfinkle. Roz serves as the Chief Investment Officer of the Helmsley Charitable Trust, an $8 billion foundation dedicated to increasing access to health care. Jan is the founder of Arboretum Ventures, a $700 million health care-focused venture capital firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Arboretum focuses on investments "off the coast" targeting compani...

Jennifer Heller is the President and Chief Investment Officer of Brandywine Group Advisors, Inc., a subsidiary of Brandywine Trust Group. Jenny manages $12 billion of 'family endowments' that are effectively permanent capital if well invested and managed. She is nothing short of a superstar CIO. Jenny was the 7th guest on the show back in 2017, and that recording is replayed in the feed. Our secon...

Jenny Heller is the President and Chief Investment Officer of Brandywine Trust Group.  Brandywine formed 25 years ago to manage the capital for a small group of families that all share a long-term, multi-generational time horizon. Today, it oversees almost $9B for those same families, much of it from compounding over a quarter century. The Group invests flexibly across asset classes, with a focus...

On today's manager meeting, Tim McCusker speaks with Rick Rieder. Tim is the Chief Investment Officer at NEPC, one of the industry's largest independent investment consultants with over $1.3 trillion assets under advisement. Rick is BlackRock's Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income, a group that manages approximately $2 trillion in assets. BlackRock's fixed income platform covers both ac...

Matt Spielman is the Founder and CEO of Inflection Point Partners an executive coaching practice he launched after a twenty-year career in the financial and corporate world. Matt partners with high-performing executives and their teams in asset management, media, professional sports, and other industries, and last year was named one of the leading coaches in asset management by Institutional Inves...

On today's manager meeting, Donna Snider speaks with Bruce Martin. Donna was a past guest on the show when named  Institutional Investor 's top CIO of the future.  Sure enough, today she serves as the Chief Investment Officer at Hackensack Meridian Health. Bruce founded Still Lake Capital to invest in a concentrated portfolio of equities after spending twenty-five years in the credit markets, incl...

My guests on today's show are financial journalists Max Frumes and Sujeet Indap, co-authors of "The Caesars Palace Coup," a book detailing the bankruptcy of Caesars Entertainment. Coming off the heels of our Private Equity Masters mini-series, this conversation dives into a private equity deal gone wrong, including some technical aspects of what it takes to emerge from a bankruptcy. We walk throug...

Today's show is a special sponsor insight highlighting an example of the terrific research that comes out of Pitchbook. My guest is Wylie Fernyhough, PitchBook's lead private equity analyst, where he produces industry research and dives deep on thematic areas of interest. Our conversation covers his research on the business of buying stakes in asset managers.  We discuss its history, rationale, an...

On today's show, Stephen Gilmore interviews Greg Jensen. Stephen is the Chief Investment Officer at New Zealand Super Fund, the NZD $59 billion (USD $41 billion) innovative sovereign wealth fund whose CEO Matt Whineray was a former guest on Capital Allocators.  Greg is the Co-CIO of Bridgewater Associates, where he works alongside fellow Co-CIOs Ray Dailo and Bob Prince at the $150 billion systema...

Our Private Equity Masters mini-series concludes with Chuck Davis, the CEO and Chairman of the Investment Committee at Stone Point Capital. Stone Point has invested $21 billion across 135 businesses, all in the financial services industry. Prior to joining Stone Point's predecessor entity at Marsh McLellan twenty-three years ago, he was a partner at Goldman Sachs, where he spent the prior twenty-t...

On today's manager meeting, Kristen VanGelder speaks with Jonathan Lewinsohn. Kristen is Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Evanston Capital, a $4 billion hedge fund of funds whose CEO and CIO, Adam Blitz, was a past guest on the show. She's spent the last eighteen years at Evanston alongside Adam and the team. Jonathan co-founded Diameter Capital four years ago alongside Scott Goodwin and today m...

Orlando Bravo is a Founder and Managing Partner of Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm focused on software and technology companies with over $78 billion in assets under management. Among his many accolades, Forbes named Orlando "Wall Street's best dealmaker" in 2019. Our conversation covers Orlando's background, early investment lessons, and approach around management, analytics, and collaborative...

On today's manager meeting, Jim Dunn speaks with Julia Bonafede. Jim is a past guest on the show and the CEO and CIO of Verger Capital, an OCIO whose anchor client is Wake Forest University.  Jim previously served as CIO of Wake Forest and before that, was CIO of investment consultant Wilshire Associates, where he worked with Julia.  Julia was at Wilshire for 24-years, capped by serving as Preside...

Doug Ostrover is the Co-Founder and CEO of Blue Owl Capital, a public company borne out of a merger combining Owl Rock Capital and Dyal Capital. Doug is also the CEO and Co-CIO of Owl Rock Capital Partners, a direct lender to middle-market companies that he co-founded in 2016 and today manages $30 billion in permanent capital assets. The combined Blue Owl manages approximately $53 billion in asset...

On today's show, Tom Lenehan interviews Bill Ford. Tom was a very early guest on the show while at Rockefeller University and earlier this year took over as CIO of the $1.6 billion Wallace Foundation.  Bill is Chairman and CEO of General Atlantic, a pioneer in growth equity investing that was founded by Duty Free Shoppers entrepreneur Chuck Feeney in 1980. Today, General Atlanticmanages $53 billio...

Virginie Morgon is the CEO of Eurazeo, a publicly listed asset manager that's one of Europe's leading private equity investors with more than $26 billion in assets, including $8 billion in permanent capital, across private equity, private debt, and real asset strategies. Our conversation covers Virginie's background, transition to private equity, and Eurazeo's rich history. We discuss the business...

On today's manager meeting, Joel Wittenberg speaks with Eli Casdin. Joel is the former Chief Investment Officer of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the U.S. Eli is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Casdin Capital, a $3.5 billion dollar investment firm focused on investments in life sciences. Their conversation starts with Eli's thematic case fo...

David Rubenstein is the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group. Founded back in 1987, Carlyle is one of the world's largest and most diversified global investment firms with $260 billion in asset under management across three business segments and twenty-nine offices around the world.   Our conversation covers David's start in private equity, growing Carlyle from the early days, raising c...

Alex Shahidi speaks with Jeremy Grantham. Alex is a past guest on the show and Co-CIO of Evoke Wealth and ARIS Consulting, a $19 billion registered investment advisor he co-founded in 2014.  Jeremy is the famed leader of money manager GMO, overseeing $60 billion in assets. Their conversation discusses the current market bubble unlike any other in history, some thoughts on climate change, value inv...

Manager Meetings with Capital Allocators will feature an interview with a money manager, conducted by one of the manager's institutional clients. We'll share the stories and strategies that attracted the attention of the investor, bringing to light investment opportunities for allocators, both from well-known and less well-known managers, each time introduced by someone who believes in the manager...

Robert F. Smith is the Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners. Vista is a private investment firm that focuses entirely on enterprise software companies and manages $75 billion in assets across private equity, permanent capital, credit and public vehicles.   Taken together, Vista's current portfolio companies are about 70 in number and house 70,000 employees, 700,000 customers across 175...