Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry

John Connaughton is a Co-Managing Partner at Bain Capital, a leading global private investment firm that oversees approximately $130 billion in assets. Founded in 1984 as the pioneer of a consulting-based approach to private equity investing, Bain Capital today invests across private equity, credit, public equity, venture capital and real estate. Our conversation covers the early years of private...

My guest on the first episode of Private Equity Masters is John Toomey, one of two members of the Executive Management Committee at HarbourVest Partners. For more than thirty years, HarbourVest has invested across all parts of the private equity spectrum - in funds, secondaries, and direct co-invests.  Today , it oversees over $75 billion of assets and canvasses the world.    Our conversation disc...

Katy Milkman ,  the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, host of  Choiceology , Charles Schwab's popular podcast on behavioral economics, the co-founder and co-director alongside Angela Duckworth of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and most recently, the author of  How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You are to Where You Want to Be...

Alex Rodriguez had a 25-year professional baseball career, highlighted by appearing in 14 MLB All-Star Games, winning the 2009 World Series Championship as a member of the New York Yankees, and hitting 696 home runs including more grand slams than any other player in history.    He is also is the Chairman and CEO of A-Rod Corp, an investment holding company he started at age 20 in 1995 that  today...

Charley Ellis is the founder of Greenwich Associates, author of sixteen investment books, and now a three-time guest on the show. The bookends of his published library - his seminal book,  Investment Policy,  and most recent work,  The Index Revolution , discuss the case for indexing for most investors. Yet one of Charley's most longstanding and passionate engagements proved the exception to the r...

Investment luminary Charley Ellis is the founder of Greenwich Associates, author of 16 books, and one of the most sought-after industry advisors worldwide.  He also believes deeply in the paradox of skill and his latest book, The Index Revolution: Why Investors Should Join It Now , presents a compelling case for indexing for most investors.. Charley was an early guest on the show and we reconvened...

Charley Ellis is one of the most highly regarded experts in the investment business.  After spending nearly a decade as an equity research analyst in the 1960s, Charley founded financial services consulting firm Greenwich Associates in 1972 to help institutions understand what their clients think of them.  Over 50 years, Charley has worked hand in hand with nearly every major financial institution...

Dr. Ashby Monk is the Executive and Research Director of the Stanford University Global Projects Center. Ashby was named by  CIO Magazine  as one of the most influential academics in the institutional investing world. His current research focuses on the design and governance of institutional investors, with specialization on pension and sovereign wealth funds. Ashby's most recent book, The Technol...

Dr. Ashby Monk is the Executive and Research Director of the Stanford University Global Projects Center. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the University of Oxford, a Senior Advisor to the Chief Investment Officer of the University of California, and the co-founder of Long Game. Ashby advises sovereign wealth funds and large pension funds, and is involved with a bunch of fin tech companies...

Dan Ariely is a leading behavioral economist, author, entrepreneur and the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. Dan is a founding partner of Irrational Capital, an investment research firm that quantifies the impact of corporate culture and employee motivation on financial performance.    My initial conversation with Dan two years ago has been one of t...

Dan Ariely is a renowned behavioral economist, author, entrepreneur, and investor.  He is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight.  Dan is the author of six books, most of which have the word "Irrationality" in the title and has a weekly column in the The Wall Street Journal called "Ask Ariely....

Sulaiman Alderbas, the Head of Alternative Investments at Kuwait's $130 billion Public Institution of Social Security, or PIFSS. Sulaiman arrived at PIFSS from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Development in 2016, shortly before a scandal erupted when the former head of PIFSS was convicted of corruption and embezzling public funds for thirty years amounting to billions of dollars. Alongside Meshal Al-Othm...

Mark Johnson is the Managing Partner of Astra Capital Management, a mid-market growth buyout firm specializing in the communications and technology services sectors. Mark co-founded Astra after twenty years of experience investing at JH Whitney, Blackstone, and Carlyle. He partnered with seasoned deal and operating executives and brought the best practices from large shops to Astra with an entrepr...

Steve Moseley is the Head of Alternative Investments at Alaska Permanent Fund, a $70 billion sovereign endowment that supports the citizens of Alaska.  Steve leads a small team, based in Juneau, Alaska, that is one of the most active participants in what he calls the space in between General Partners and Limited Partners. Across private equity, venture capital, infrastructure, and private credit,...

Daniel Adamson is a Senior Managing Director at Wafra and the President of Capital Constellation, a joint venture between mega asset owners in Europe, North America and the Middle East that invests in the next generation of private equity managers. Our conversation focuses on this innovative joint venture and how a group of large asset owners came together to scale their resources.  We touch on a...

Brian Bares is the founder of Bares Capital Management, a $5 billion long only investment boutique that employs independent, qualitative research on growing companies to build highly concentrated portfolios.   Our conversation covers Brian's early life investing lessons, bootstrapping an asset management business, and finding product-market fit. We then turn to his investment approach, highlightin...

Cade Massey is a Professor at the Wharton School where his research focuses on judgment under uncertainty, or how, and how well, people predict what will happen in the future. In particular, he studies people analytics, or how to predict who will perform well in the future. Cade is the co-host of the "Wharton Moneyball" podcast and for many years, he's studied talent selection at the NFL draft, wh...

In our continuing exploration of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, headlines of late have turned to NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.  From NBA Top Shots to Beeple's artwork, NFTs are the hottest use case in the crypto ecosystem.   My friends at a16z recently released an episode on their wildly popular a16z podcast called All About NFTs, featuring Linda Xie from Scalar Capital and Jesse Wa...

Yen Liow is the founder and Managing Partner of Aravt Global, a fundamental global equity firm based in New York that manages long-short and long only products. Yen founded Aravt after a long stint at famed family office Ziff Brothers Investments, where he was part of the team that managed a market, neutral long-short hedge fund in a culture of framework thinking and continuous improvement.   Our...

Dominic Garcia serves as Chief Investment Officer for the Public Employees Retirement Association of New Mexico (PERA), a $16 billion pension system that serves over 90,000 members and provides over $1.2 billion in annual benefits. Dominic is a native of New Mexico, began his allocator career at New Mexico PERA and returned to re-join the system in 2017 as CIO after nearly a decade at SWIB, the St...

Jeff Housenbold, a Managing Director for the last four years at Softbank Investment Advisors, where he led one of the six investment teams that deployed the $100 billion Softbank Vision Fund. Prior to joining Softbank, Jeff worked at sixteen companies, including eleven years as CEO of Shutterfly. four years in the early days of ebay, four as Special Industry Advisor to KKR, and one as Entrepreneur...

As we finish up book launch week, I thought I'd share this interview conducted by Jenny Heller, my friend, the 7th guest on the show, and the President and CIO of Brandywine Group Advisors.  We discuss the business of Capital Allocators, entrepreneurship, effectiveness, and investing – including a brief description of my most recent private equity fund investment.   Learn More Subscribe: Apple | S...

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...

I'm excited to share that we have launched our new website at capitalallocators.com or still, at the familiar capitalallocatorpodcast.com .   The new site makes it easier for you to engage with everything in the Capital Allocators Community - the podcast, premium content, events, and writing. Speaking of which, my new book, Capital Allocators: How the world's elite money managers lead and invest,...

My new book – Capital Allocators:  How the world's elite money managers lead and invest – releases tomorrow. I've been on a bit of a podcast tour the last few weeks, appearing on some of my favorite shows. I thought it would be fun to share an interview about the book here, so I asked Patrick O'Shaughnessy to interview me for the show.   Our conversation covers the journey of the podcast itself an...