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Lisa Jones on Investing With a Purpose (Podcast) · Masters in Business

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: This is Mesters in Business with Very Renaults on Bluebird Radio.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have another extra special guest.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Her name is Lisa Jones. She's CEO of Amunday US
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  Speaker 1: that's the American division of French asset management giant Amundi.
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  Speaker 1: They could be the largest asset manager that most people
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  Speaker 1: are unfamiliar with. They run over two trillion dollars about
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  Speaker 1: one point seven three trillion euros. That's a lot of money.
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  Speaker 1: They're they're the second largest asset manager in Europe after Alians.
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  Speaker 1: They're one of the top ten asset managers. They're they're
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  Speaker 1: just immense. Uh. Lisa Jones division is over a hundred
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  Speaker 1: billion dollars and she really has a unique perspective on
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  Speaker 1: the asset management business. She has worked at a number
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  Speaker 1: of places um usually uh switching jobs because her from
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  Speaker 1: was required or she was offered a bigger job at
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  Speaker 1: a at another shop. So she's been at places like
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  Speaker 1: Eaton Vans and Pioneer Funds and and Morgan Stanley and MFS.
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  Speaker 1: So she knows all there is to know about all
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  Speaker 1: three parts of the industry, the what some people call
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  Speaker 1: client facing, back office and and middle part of the office,
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  Speaker 1: which is the actual asset management. She's uniquely qualified to
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  Speaker 1: discuss what's going on in the industry, where it's been
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  Speaker 1: and where it's likely to to end up. I found
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  Speaker 1: the conversation to be absolutely fascinating, and I think you
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  Speaker 1: will also so, with no further ado, my conversation with
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  Speaker 1: a Mundy US is CEO Lisa Jones. This is Mesters
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: in Business with very Renaults on Bluebird Radio. My extra
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: special guest this week is Lisa Jones. She is the
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  Speaker 1: CEO of A Monday US, the hundred billion dollar our
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  Speaker 1: u S arm of Europe's second largest asset manager, A Monday.
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  Speaker 1: A Monday proper manages over to trillion dollars in assets.
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  Speaker 1: They're one of the ten largest asset managers in the world,
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  Speaker 1: with over a hundred million clients in thirty six countries,
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  Speaker 1: about forty hundred employees. Lisa Jones, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thanks Berry,
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  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me here today. My pleasure. I've been
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  Speaker 1: looking forward to chatting with you for a while. I
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  Speaker 1: think of A Monday as as really one of the
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  Speaker 1: largest asset managers that a lot of people, especially in
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  Speaker 1: the US, haven't heard of. But before we get to
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  Speaker 1: a Monday. Let's talk a little bit about your early
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  Speaker 1: career experience. You come out of Trinity College with the
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  Speaker 1: bachelor's in economics and you started MFS Investment Management. Tell
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  Speaker 1: us a little bit about your early experiences in the industry.
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  Speaker 1: So you know, I've been working for thirty years, so
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  Speaker 1: when you say tell me about your early experiences, sure
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  Speaker 1: we don't go on for so long. But actually, prior
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  Speaker 1: to m f S, I started working at ef Hutton.
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  Speaker 1: For those of your listeners who remember EF Hutton, Trinity
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  Speaker 1: is in Hartford, and at that point in time, you
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  Speaker 1: went to New York or you went to Boston, and
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  Speaker 1: I was from Boston, so I wanted to take a
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  Speaker 1: shot at working in New York City, and I started
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  Speaker 1: working for E. F. Hutton and worked there for a
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  Speaker 1: few years, really worked there through the Crisis of nineteen
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  Speaker 1: eight you know, the stock market crash um in the
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  Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties, and started in customer service of EF
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  Speaker 1: Hutton for those brokerage accounts where shareholders wanted to call
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  Speaker 1: and ask questions and get some answers. It was a
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  Speaker 1: great introduction into being in a client facing role. And
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  Speaker 1: so from there I went to work at MFS in Boston.
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  Speaker 1: I joined MFS in I joined MFS as a whole
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  Speaker 1: salor covering the bank channel. The territory was the northeast
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  Speaker 1: and back then in the bank channel, the northeast was
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  Speaker 1: really mained down to Virginia. And it was in the
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  Speaker 1: early days there beyond bank trust departments, banks were beginning
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  Speaker 1: to have licensed investment professionals sit in their lobbies to
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  Speaker 1: offer alternatives to banking customers. And that was my first
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  Speaker 1: experience working at MFS as a wholesaler. I then, as
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  Speaker 1: the time went on, began to become in house more
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  Speaker 1: in a management role and assume responsibility for running the
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  Speaker 1: bank channel at MFS. And keep in mind, as we
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  Speaker 1: think about the world of investing today and talking about
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  Speaker 1: low interest rates, this is a period of time when
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  Speaker 1: CDs were double digit, UH treasuries were double digit and
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  Speaker 1: so it was quite a different vin erment for selling
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  Speaker 1: investment products in yields of that at that point in time.
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  Speaker 1: So is that MFEST for a total of sixteen or
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  Speaker 1: so years years I'll suspend some time on the institutional
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  Speaker 1: side running the global institutional business for at that time.
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  Speaker 1: So so let's talk a little bit about that global
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  Speaker 1: institutional business. Eventually you end up as global head of
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  Speaker 1: distribution at Morgan Stanley's what enabled you to climb to
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  Speaker 1: the top of that ladder? And how different is institutional
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  Speaker 1: and distribution from what people typically think of as individual investments.
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  Speaker 1: So today I would say that those lines between the
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  Speaker 1: two groups are blurring. But let's go back to the
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  Speaker 1: point in time of when I transition from what we
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  Speaker 1: would call the kind of retailer the distribution side, to
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  Speaker 1: the institutional side, being responsible for running the bank channel.
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  Speaker 1: At that time, I was engaged with the bank trust
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  Speaker 1: departments and they would be hiring external managers to offer
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  Speaker 1: investment solutions to trust clients. And I began working very
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  Speaker 1: closely with the portfolio managers and becoming more um understanding
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  Speaker 1: and involved and frankly really intrigued with portfolio construction and
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  Speaker 1: portfolio management. And so as the business at MFS grew,
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  Speaker 1: the opportunity for me to transition to the institutional side
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  Speaker 1: was presented to me. So I enjoyed how the pms
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  Speaker 1: put portfolios together, how they thought about risks, how they
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  Speaker 1: thought about buying cell discipline and the institutional side got
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  Speaker 1: me much closer to overall portfolio construction and portfolio management,
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  Speaker 1: and as ussset management firm began to want to go
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  Speaker 1: global and enter international market. UM, my role was expanded
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  Speaker 1: into global head of Institutional where MFS was in multiple
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  Speaker 1: different markets kind of offering our investment solutions and strategies
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  Speaker 1: to sovereign well fund central banks, UH and pension fund investors.
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  Speaker 1: And so that was UH the opportunity to go from
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  Speaker 1: retail to distribution when you bring those two together. UM.
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  Speaker 1: I then from MFS, I actually went to eat Vance
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  Speaker 1: to run the eat Vance Global institutional business, and I
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  Speaker 1: got a call out of the blue from the former
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  Speaker 1: CEO of MFS when I was there, Jeff Shames. Many
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  Speaker 1: of your long time listeners may remember Jeff, and he
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  Speaker 1: had taken a role at MFM at Morgan Stanley Investment
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  Speaker 1: Management as an advisor, and at that time, Morgan Stanley
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  Speaker 1: Investment Management was looking for a new role, global Head
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  Speaker 1: of Distribution, which encompassed both institutional and retail distribution on
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  Speaker 1: a global scale. So my experience at both MFFT any
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  Speaker 1: evance on the retail on the institutional side gave me
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  Speaker 1: the global awareness the retail in the institutional background serving
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  Speaker 1: multiple different types of clients and it fully wrapped up
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  Speaker 1: into that role at EMSUM on being global head of distribution.
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  Speaker 1: So how do you make the leap from Morgan Stanley
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  Speaker 1: where you're really on on what I think a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people would perceive as an institutional sales side to
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  Speaker 1: a Monday in where really you're running the whole shooting
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  Speaker 1: match for at least for the US arm which is
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  Speaker 1: you know, a hundred billion dollars is still real money.
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  Speaker 1: Great question. So, as I've worked at different organizations, I
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  Speaker 1: became familiar with and really became a student of culture.
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  Speaker 1: And when you have the magic of a positive culture
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  Speaker 1: and you can bring people together, you can create an
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  Speaker 1: environment where people have fun. You you treat your clients
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  Speaker 1: and your employees exceptionally well. And culture is a key
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  Speaker 1: aspect of long term success. And having observed multiple cultures
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  Speaker 1: across the many firms, I knew that I wanted to
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  Speaker 1: be a champion of a culture. And it is easier
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  Speaker 1: when you have influence over the entire organization rather than
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  Speaker 1: when you have only influence over the distribution side, institutional
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  Speaker 1: or retail. And in two thousand and fourteen, prior to
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  Speaker 1: being known as a Monday, the firm was Pioneer Investments,
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  Speaker 1: and Pioneer Investment has been just I mean, you know
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  Speaker 1: Pioneer right. We've been in the market since nine, launched
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  Speaker 1: one of America's first mutual funds, and having worked in
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  Speaker 1: and around the Boston community in the asset management space
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  Speaker 1: for a long time, always had tremendous respect for Pioneer Investments.
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  Speaker 1: Knew some of the employees that were working at Pioneer Investment,
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  Speaker 1: some of them have worked for me at other organizations,
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  Speaker 1: and Pioneer was looking for a us CEO and wanted
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: the profile of the us CEO to be someone that
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  Speaker 1: comes from a client facing background, and so the opportunity
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  Speaker 1: for me was one. It was a profile that I had,
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  Speaker 1: but number two because I knew that I had great
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  Speaker 1: experience and bressed across multiple firms, working across an organization,
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  Speaker 1: and the value I believe that I brought to the
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  Speaker 1: firm you know at the time and hopefully fill today
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  Speaker 1: as you talked to my employees, is an appreciation for
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  Speaker 1: culture and appreciation of working together and in particular for
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  Speaker 1: my investment team, having worked at such broad based asset
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  Speaker 1: management firms in the way of investment offerings and product
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  Speaker 1: in essence, I have been out of teams that have launched, sold, retained, defended,
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  Speaker 1: closed all types of investment strategies across multiple market cycles,
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  Speaker 1: to multiple geographies and multiple channels. So while I've never
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  Speaker 1: had the opportunity to actually run money, all that's important
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  Speaker 1: around it that is really important to portfolio managers, you know,
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  Speaker 1: being investment lad consistency and repeatability of an investment process,
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  Speaker 1: taking long term view. That was complementary to the investment
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  Speaker 1: team here, and fortunately I was given the opportunity to
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  Speaker 1: take the role in two thousand and fourteen, UH the
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  Speaker 1: organization at that time, very interestingly, was up for sale.
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  Speaker 1: It was owned by UniCredit Bank UH, a large Italian
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  Speaker 1: based bank, who had acquired Pioneer in the year two thousand.
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  Speaker 1: So the employees at Pioneer Investors had exposure and had
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  Speaker 1: been familiar with going through an integration and being purchased
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  Speaker 1: by a European based financial institution, and in two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and seventeen the transaction closed with the money acquiring Pioneer
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  Speaker 1: Investments got it. So, so I want to stay with culture,
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  Speaker 1: which you've you've referenced a couple of times and asked
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  Speaker 1: what was it like trying to maintain that sense of
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  Speaker 1: corporate culture and objectives and the whole team all pulling
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  Speaker 1: in the same direction. During the lockdown, during the pandemic,
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  Speaker 1: when everybody had to work from home and there was
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  Speaker 1: a lot of uncertainty as to what was going to
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  Speaker 1: happen next, and people were genuinely nervous. Tell us what
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  Speaker 1: you did to maintain that corporate culture. It's been one
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  Speaker 1: of the greatest challenges in learnings, I think for anyone
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  Speaker 1: who's in a position of leadership that we've experienced over
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  Speaker 1: the West eighteen or twenty months. And if you recall
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: in March of when we all went home to work remotely,
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  Speaker 1: we had put out messages that we expect to be
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  Speaker 1: back in the office in thirty days. So when we
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: went remote, I didn't give it any thought other than
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  Speaker 1: let's stay in contact with everyone, let's continue to have
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  Speaker 1: our meetings. And it's thirty one to sixty to eighteen
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  Speaker 1: months later. Immediately you had to kind of shift stage right.
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  Speaker 1: And what I ended up really bringing into the organ
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  Speaker 1: bringing into this kind of leadership during a COVID environment
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  Speaker 1: is my communication skills, and so I adapted my ability
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  Speaker 1: to walk the halls and be with people to putting
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  Speaker 1: together a series of programs on how do I remain
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  Speaker 1: connected and how do we be transparent and how do
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  Speaker 1: we communicate? So in the first several weeks, I sent
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  Speaker 1: out a daily email message to the organization and it
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  Speaker 1: was as soon as go out for a walk and
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  Speaker 1: get some fresh air, or here is a final that
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  Speaker 1: we participated in virtually, or here's what's going on in
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  Speaker 1: the investment department. Are here's the news from our I
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  Speaker 1: T department as we've all gone remotely and people were
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  Speaker 1: positively responding to those daily email messages. And as the
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  Speaker 1: days and weeks went on, the daily notes became too
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  Speaker 1: tactical and we needed to shift a bit more strategically.
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  Speaker 1: So I implemented both a weekly All America's conference call
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  Speaker 1: with everyone dialing in and it was thirty minutes because
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: we were we were all starting to experience kind of
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  Speaker 1: uh burnout fatigue with the multiple zoom calls fatigue right,
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  Speaker 1: And I also launched weekly coffees with Lisa. It was
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  Speaker 1: every Thursday from ten to ten forty five and I
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  Speaker 1: limited the group to eight or ten people sign up.
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  Speaker 1: My s watch your cat, you know one across your
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  Speaker 1: your keyboard, Let's listen to the kids screaming in the background,
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  Speaker 1: Let's talk about what it's like to work remotely, and
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  Speaker 1: so culture for me during that pandemic was best supported
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  Speaker 1: by being present in the new ways that we had
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  Speaker 1: to be present, and we continued that really through still
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  Speaker 1: to this day. While many of us are back in
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the office still on a voluntary basis. My weekly calls
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: are now every two weeks. In fact, later on today
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: we're doing a virtual town hall. It's all employees, but
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: we've had to adapt our communication skills that we've developed
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: as leaders into new ways. I think it was the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Washington Post that had a column to this week that
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: workers are are putting on clothes and going back to
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the office only to spend all day on zoom calls.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: How do you avoid those circumstances, says or are you
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  Speaker 1: guys going to continue UM to be a little bit
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: hybrid where people come into the office partly and work
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: from home partly. So we have rolled out a we're
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: all coming back into the office on October. Our offices
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: have been opened since June on a voluntary basis, and
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: we're seeing more and more people come into our offices.
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  Speaker 1: UM in particular Boston in Durham, North Carolina. And what
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  Speaker 1: we really talked about to your point is it doesn't
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: make sense if we're all commuting an hour to come
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  Speaker 1: into the office to be on a zoom call. Because
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: what we know is productivity is super good working in
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: remote locations. So what we've tried to challenge ourselves with
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: is that the home office remains as a place of productivity,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: then the physical office at sixty State Street remains the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: place for collaboration. So as we go to a hybrid model,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: and we're asking people to come back three days a week,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: any three days that you want, but we're asking the
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: department heads to make sure that you're scheduling and hosting
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: your team meetings all on one day where you're asking
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: all employees to come back into the office of your
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: team so you can have that team meeting and you
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: can have that collaboration. Because the zoom calls work when
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: everyone is remote, it gets more challenging when some are
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: remote and some are sitting around a table. You you
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: end up getting a very different meeting dynamic that is
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: not all that productive. So we've thought about that and
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: that's the way that we're going to try to ensure
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: that you're not sitting all by yourself on zoom calls,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: because frankly, you can do that from home. Quite quite interesting.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about your role. What do
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: you do as CEO of a Monda US so a
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: CEO of Amunda US variant all so, I bring in
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Canada and Latin America as heads of those regions as well.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So we have offices that I'm responsible for from Montreal, Toronto, Boston, Durham,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: North Carolina, Miami, Mexico City, in Santiago, Chile, so all
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: up and down the America's perimeter. From a US perspective,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: we are a full organization of all the infrastructure you
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: would expect for a large asset management firm, portfolio management, trading,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: legal compliance, i T, marketing, distribution, et cetera. So my
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: responsibility is across all of those aspects of front, middle
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and back office as we distribute our investment solutions here
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: throughout the America's but we also, if you will, export
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: our investment capabilities outside of the America's And as a
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: member of the Global Executive Committee of a Monday, I
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: work very closely with the other countries and regions whose
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: clients are interested in US dollar denominated product. So so
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about UM, the global giant
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: that is a mundy with over two trillion dollars an asset.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: You know when I when I look at the company
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: and I research what they do, there really isn't an
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: area of the investment world that a mundy doesn't touch upon.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: So let me ask you some some broad questions about that,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: starting with what are you hearing from investors today, be
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: they US or international? What what sort of questions are
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: investors asking. I'm going to answer that in two ways. One, Strategically,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: clients today are interested in working with firms where they
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: can develop a partnership with kind of a go to
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: asset management firm. If you have a challenge with pension
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: funding or you're distributing through finance and advisors, and you
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: want to work with a handful of companies that can
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: help you solve a problem. So one, clients want to
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: position with farms in a partnership way. Second, clients are
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: truly interested in problem solving. We're in a persistently low
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: right environment, So how do I seek yields on a
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: global basis, on a local basis how do I say
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: for retirement, how do I say for all of those
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: longer term aspects. Clients are also wanting transparency from their
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: asset management partners, like we're all very good as human
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: beings of sharing very good news, but when we have
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: bad news to share. I think that that's what this
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: thing was is some firms from others, and we try
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: to be extremely transparent and timely with all the information
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: that we're sharing with clients. And more specifically, over the
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: last few years, with the growth of e s G,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: whether it's internationally or here in the United States, are
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Elian's retail and institutional are asking many questions about e
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: s G and net zero and climate change, and we're
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: hoping to position ourselves as a trusted advisor with those clients.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about e s G
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: because there's some really interesting things. First. I've been hearing
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: for decades, literally decades, that this is the next big
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: thing in asset management, And while it certainly has captured
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of mind share, I don't get the sense
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: that it's captured all that much in terms of capital flows.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And you see surveys of the next generation who's gonna
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: inherit wealth, either women as as the inheritors um from
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the spouse or their kids. Everybody says they like the
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: idea of E s G investing, and everybody says they
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: want to put their money to work that way, but
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: it hasn't really shown up dramatically anyway in the capital flows.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on that? So I share similar
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: perspectives um with you one having been in this business
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: for a long period of time five years ago when
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: E f G kind of really I would say in
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: a more pronounced way, became topical. I immediately thought back
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: to my earlier days on the institutional side, when socially
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: responsible investing on behalf of certain endowments or charitable organizations
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: or prevalent and many not all, many had disappointing experiences
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: from an investment returned perspective, and they did so because
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: some were completely eliminating. All sectors are all you know,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: certain financial institutions, and so that lack of exposure or
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: that exclusionary approach created certain disappointing returns. So I immediately
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: thought of that that environment that I grew up in,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the big question started to say, can I have good
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: investment performance while also pursuing a path on E S
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: G investing, and many of those conversations, while they still exist,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I do believe that what we have seen over the
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: last few years, in particular from a US and I
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: can comment from outside of the United States, that investing
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: for the long term and investing your money so over
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: the long term you you grow your wealth for retirement
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: or saving for college. For many that is a primary
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: concern and that will always drive from capital flows. Increasingly,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: what we're finding in from a fundamental investment perspective that
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: as you consider investing in a particular company, whether it's
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: on the equity of the death side, as you consider
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: all risks that can be involved, cash flow risk, change
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: of company management, investment in um you know, are in
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: d for certain sectors. Many of the risks that we
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: have always considered and increasingly are considering are some of
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: those E S and G risks and environmental disaster or
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: governance issue. So integrating those considerations into an investment process
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: is very good risk management. Now you come to the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: point about kind of millennials, kind of our kids generations,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: and we do find and the science and the statistics
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: support that that certain generations are very interested in doing
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: well for the planet, investing with the purpose, investing with intentionality,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and what we're experiencing and in fact in a Monday
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: you know we're considering this ourselves, is in launching particular
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: investment solutions that are impact oriented, so upfront, if someone
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: is interested in net zero or de harbonizing a footprint
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: or investing for clean water, that those investment objectives are
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: clear and stated right up front, so that there's no confusion.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: We're all um eagerly anticipating and I would say welcoming
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: further regulation and clarity for both companies and asset management
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: firms around these definitions of terms, because there's still some
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: great confusion that um that does exist. And we know
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: that the change of administration with the Biden administration much
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: you know that administration is much more friendly towards E
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: s G investing or climate change and some regulation that's
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: coming out from a European perspective. And this is where
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: being based in Paris, France is of great interest to
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: our clients in the United States, whose Europe has been
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: forward thinking, forward looking, and well ahead of other regions
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: when it comes to E s G investing and when
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: our institutional clients are retail clients in the US are
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: are interested in a conversation or a different perspective. Being
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: based in Paris, you you get the Paris Accordy of
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: climate change. Of all of that, it's a it's a
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: unique glenn So you're right, there's so much talk about it.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: There are some pretty considerable flows on a global basis.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: So of our one point seven trillion euros that you mentioned,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: eight hundred billion euros is in kind of E s
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: G type allocations. Almost half it's considerable. It is. Yeah,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not surprised by that because a it
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: seems like Europe is far more um ahead of the
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: curve in terms of legislation. But that almost doesn't matter,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: because if the generational surveys are accurate and the millennials
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: and their ilk are really going to put their money
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: where their mouths are, um, this is gonna happen organically anyway.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: There will be beyond just just using E s G
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: as a risk factor. It appears that there's going to
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: be a lot of money moving in that direction. It
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: may take a couple of decades, but that's what we're
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: likely to see. UM as money moves from the boomers
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to the gen X, gen y and and millennials. I
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: agree with you. So, so let's stick with the concept
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: of of the international perspective. UM. You mentioned UH your
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: headquartered UH the parent companies headquartered in Paris. Generally speaking,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: overseas markets, be they developed or emerging, tend to be
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: either cheaper or much cheaper UH than the U S lately.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: What are your thoughts about valuations globally so on a
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: global perspective, you know, let's kind of stay at a
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: at a top line level for a moment. You know
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: that the pandemic and the environment that we've been in
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: over the last eighteen to twenty months or so has
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: uh been a positive for active management. So in the
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: United States, States were all about active management. That's what
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: we do. And prior to the pandemic, you saw um,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: you know, five or six companies in particular from the
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: US perspective that was really driving the returns of the
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: S and P five hundred and making it so difficult
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: for active managers to really compete and outperform. And what
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: the pandemic has introduced over the last many months or
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: so is more breath across where we're seeing companies kind
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: of contribute to the overall growth and the earning. So
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: whether it's the stay at home boom and the things
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: that we were buying when we weren't going into stores.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Uh um. You know, the breath of the marketplace expanded,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: and so unlike prior to the pandemic when you had
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: five stocks I think returning fifty five, fifty six and
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: two thousand and nineteen, you have a broader suite. So
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: active management and selecting those companies that are attractive in
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: this broader breath is appropriate both on a European basis
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: as well as from a US perspective. What we've also
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: seen the first half of the year to kind of
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: the second half of the year is that there was
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: great enthusiasm about the economy's reopening in the United States
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and in Europe. The emerging markets a little bit further
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: behind because the pace by which vaccinations were occurring was
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: less behind than in the developed markets as we know,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, the delta variant kind
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of started to pop up, and the exuberance and May
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: and Junes started to fall a little bit away. Um.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: In the months of kind of July and August and
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: September as we've been experienced over the last several months
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: or so. So what we do expect on a global
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: basis is what we are seeing is a bit of
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: a reflation in the United States as a result of
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: more vaccinations, UM kind of a wider market contribution, and
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: we have the whole growth to value rotation which we
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: started to see earlier in the year slowed down a
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: little bit, but our view is that we are going
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: to see a bit more of that growth to value
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: rotation and that happened to support more positive views from
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: a European perspective, given the underlying economy and some of
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the company so growth to value rotation UM the positivity rates.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: I was in Paris most recently and I was super
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: impressed with how the pandemic, the vaccinations, the mass getting,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the walking about was really administered um there. And I
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: think that the economies are really quickly rebounding as well.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: So in this environment and we are positive on equities,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: we have to be careful evaluations, active management and selecting
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: those companies that are at an appropriate valuation that can
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: benefit from this psycho of where we are in. We're
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: still quite positive on over the long term, and it's
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: worth mentioning. In the beginning of the vaccine rollout, the
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: US was one of the fastest countries um UH top
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: three in terms of getting vaccinations out there, but over
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: the past six months, the US has fallen behind. I
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: think we're something like thirty seven now UM with a
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: total vaccination rate of fifty and an eligible vaccination rate
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: of about sixty. Europe far ahead of so a lot
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: of countries at how is that playing out in terms
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: of their economy? Is their reopening going appreciably better than
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: some of the faltering we're seeing here in the US
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: where we're along the Gulf coast in South Dakota and Idaho,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: the hospitals are overwhelmed again. So we probably will all
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: agree that going back to full lockdowns is not something
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: that we went anticipation, and so learning to live with
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: the variant and getting vaccination rates up is really critically important.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: And again, what I could experience when I was traveling
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: a week or so ago, you know, the lines for
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: the museums and the lovely little outdoor coffee shops and
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: just kind of walking about. Everyone is walking about, but
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: there continue to be pretty you know, pretty clear guidelines.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: You've got to show your vaccination path to get into
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: museums or buildings and department stores. You know, you you
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: can go certain places and do certain things, and people
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: are all kind of masking up. So I do find
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: that they are much more serious. Again, I was only
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: in Paris that they are much more serious. And as
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: we know, in certain states in the United States. I'm
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: sitting here in Boston. You know, we're one of the
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: top three Massachusetts one of the top three or five
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: states in the country in the way of vaccination rate,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and just this morning, most recently, you know, the overall
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: kind of infection rate has fallen again below two percent.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: So we're on the right trajectory. It's in some of
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: these states, as you suggest, where the hospitalizations and the
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: access to good health care is becoming problematic again. And
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: those states that are more aggressive and getting their population vaccinated,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: are their economies kind of work and try to get
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: back to a bit of a normal lifestyle. Yeah, we're
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: recording this on a Tuesday. I have a dinner in
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: the city tonight with about a dozen people. And the
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: only reason I'm comfortable going to that dinner or for
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: a giant two thousand person conference I went to two
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: weeks ago. Is that New York City and New York
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: State both require proof of vaccination, uh for entry. Now,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: that's not a guarantee, but at least I feel like
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not exposing myself to people who may be behaving recklessly.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: If at this stage of the you know where here
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: we are, it's practically the fourth quarter of one. If
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: you're not vaccinated by now, I have to assume that
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: the rest of your daily behavior is not exactly risk averse,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and I don't want to be exposed to you. Forget
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: the politics. I'm concerned about the economic impact of those
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: folks and what it means for local businesses. Yeah, you know,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: the science is pretty clear, and I understand their skepticism
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: for some around vaccinations, but my gosh, you know, where
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: an investment managers. So we have health care analysts coming
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: in here all the time, we have physicians given us updates.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: The science is pretty clear on the safety and the
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: eck of efficacy of the vaccine. So what gives people comfort?
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: And I think New York is doing a brilliant job
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: of my doatalism Brooklyn, so I experienced the same you know,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: knowing that when you're going into a place and you're
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: surrounded by people that are vaccinated. While nothing is a
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: it just allows you to feel more safe. Right are
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: You're putting the odds in your UM side. So so
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: let's let's move beyond UM the local economy and vaccination.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: And I want to stick with the international theme and
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: ask you a couple of questions. UM about China and
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: is one of the biggest emerging markets there are. They're
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: the second largest economy in the world. A lot of
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: investors have been perplexed by their actions towards some of
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: their largest companies and best known tech companies. What should
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: investors make about this new crackdown coming from the world's
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: second largest economy. So I'm gonna have multiple personality when
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I answer this question. It's there is no simple answers,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: so feel free to You know, our listeners appreciate nuance,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: so feel free to to be internally contradictory. So, on
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the one hand, we know that geopolitical risk is something
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: that we have lived with and we will continue to
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: live with, and that the strain between US and China
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: relations is evident, and the crackdowns and the controls are
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: present UH with with our with A Monday being based
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: in Paris, being European and not necessarily having the same
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: temperature between you know, a US and a China relations.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Investing in China and growing our business in China is
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: of strategic importance for the organization and A Monday was
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: selected as I believe one of the first, maybe the
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: first foreign asset management firms to enter into UH you know,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: a joint venture with the Bank of China and to
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: help kind of grow that business in that presence of
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: professional money management for Chinese investors. So it is something
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: that we have to watch, you know, from a portfolio
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: construction perspective UM and portfolio management perspective, the US and
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: most of our assets under management are US source or
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: US equities, US fixed income. However, we do manage global
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: equity portfolio as we manage global high nel portfolios that
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: can invest in some of these markets. We tend to
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: be more large cap, not as speculative UM, and we
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: always remain cautious when we don't have a clear understanding
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: of earnings or accounting principles and practices. So it's it's
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: one of those risks that will be with us for
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: a long period of time for some institutional investors, because
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: we have these conversations all the time. UM. Allocating to
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: the we to China in particular is both of tactical
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: as well as strategic long term importance, and we're happy
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: to have those conversations. What what sort of questions are
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: you getting from clients about cryptocurrencies? Does your institutional demands, um,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: are you seeing that from clients for for cryptos? I
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: keep hearing from a lot of people who are crypto curious.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: It's probed be the best phrase I've heard for that,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: crypto crazy. Maybe. Yeah. I mean it's easy for us
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: because we don't offer it, we don't get involved with it.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: We're not um in in the business of working with
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: our clients on cryptocurrency. You know, the view is today
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: that it's much too speculative for the conservative profile and um,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: you know and platform that we put forth to institutional
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: clients into some of our retail clients. It's it's a
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: bit at a crossroad of uh, you know, interesting technology innovation.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Uh is it really money? Does it really have you
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: know the same value as currencies that we know of today. Uh.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: So our view is clients, obviously you're talking about it,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: but it's not something that we are offering today with
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: our clients, so I that doesn't surprise me. We we
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: whenever we get the question, the challenge is always how
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: do we custody this? How can we make sure that
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: you're not part of the Depending on which study you
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: see more of those people who have either lost the
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: password or have the hard um hardware damage so they
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: no longer can access that. That's nothing that we don't have.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Nobody has a solution for that yet, although I'd imagine
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: one would be coming eventually, most probably, and you know,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: we'd rather not be a market leader in that. And
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I think also as people talk about cryptocurrency, some automatically
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: believe it's just bitcoin or just this. I mean there's
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: there's multiple types of cryptocurrency, so it's not as straightforward
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: as well. So more to come for sure. Huh, really
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: really interesting. Let's talk a little bit about what it
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: takes to build a diverse team. You talk about the
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: importance of relationships and how trust is a two way
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: street and loyalty is important. How is that a business imperative?
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: How do those factors translate into a business environment. Well,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: simply if we were to take it Barry from Let's
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: talk about portfolio management for a second. For anyone who
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: has sat down with a portfolio manager or with your
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: financial advisor looking to invest in a US equity portfolio,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: what you constantly here is the benefits of diversification, That
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: diversification spreads out your risk. So not that I'm the
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: first to say this, but why doesn't that then matter
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: when it comes to the people who hire and the
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: diversification that you have on your teams and diversification today.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: And I love where this whole discuss and around diversity,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: equity inclusion has kind of gone over the last several years.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Diversification doesn't mean today solely whether I'm a man or
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: a woman, or I'm white or a non white. You know,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: it's really diversification of thought, because we can get into
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: trouble when you have group think and you're not challenging
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: status quo. So I do believe that building a diversified
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: team is a great way to harness intellectual curitiosity, to
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: challenge status quo, and frankly just to look through look
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: at the world through the lens of our shareholders and
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: our institutional clients who aren't super diverse, and you mentioned
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: earlier some of the data and science around this. It's
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: been pretty clear from everybody who studied the space that
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: the more diverse points of view you take into any
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: sort of UH situation, the better the decision making tends
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: to be. I would agree with that. Now, obviously you're
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: preaching to the choir because I've grown up. I've grown
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: up in this industry for thirty years as a woman.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: You know, I have the great honor of leading this organization,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: but I've had many experiences, like others on the car,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: where you walk into the room and you're the only
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: one of your kind. However you want to define that,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: and how sometimes that can um silence you or it
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: never silenced to me, by the way, but it could
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: make it more difficult for some people to contribute and
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: to participate in a conversation. And that's where running an
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: organization and being more focused on inclusion, inclusion of thought,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: inclusion of all perspectives. In building a respectful work environment,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: you end up camping into all of your employees rather
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: than just a handful of the go to employees that
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: may stand out for one reason or another. I think
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of momentum in the market. I tend
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: to see the world with the glass half of I'm
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: an ultimate optimist, but I like what I'm seeing where
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: the energy is. We have a lot of work to do,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: but there's definitely energy and commitment around it. Right. So
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: the upside is the overall trend moving in the right direction.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to use the word downside, but
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: the downside protection is sort of what you alluded to
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: earlier in terms of E s G as a risk factor.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Let's let's talk about that G in companies with a
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: broad governance, that it's not just run by an old
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: boys network, but where there's true diversity of thought and inclusion,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: they tend to get into far less trouble than the
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: sort of groupthink organizations. Is that a fair statement, Well,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there's lots of statistics to support that or
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: to challenge that. What I what I would agree with
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: you on, and what I would say is that by
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: having a diverse balance of people, and in particular now
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I'm lending through the lens of a female of a woman,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: I do think that the qualifications or some of the
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: awareness that I can bring to an organization is a
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: bit of a balance of that. We talked about the
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: balance of the e Q and the i Q. You know,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: it's really listening, it's understanding, it's a different risk profile
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: that you can bring into It's it's thinking about some
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: of the risks and some of the factors and lending
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: that to a conversation. We may all end up arriving
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: at the same decision, but at least my my view
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: is that we would have considered many more factors when
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: you have diversity of of thought being brought to that discussion.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: So what sort of advice do you give to women
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: who are struggling to become advocates for themselves and advocates
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: for women in the workplace, be it employment or promotion
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: or you know, governance as as part of the member
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: of the board or or c suite. This is a
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: question I'm constantly asked, and I offer myself to any
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: and all of the women in my company and you know,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: friends and family. I'm the mother of two daughters eight
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: and five years old, and I try to provide them
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: with advice that frankly, I was never given, but I
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: had to learn on my own and what I do,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: what I would love to see more women do is
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: really advocate for yourself. Don't allow decisions to take place
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: around you, but to really sit down with management and
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: communicate what are your career aspirations, where do you want
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: to go and how can I help you get there
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: and position yourself for being truly qualified for a position.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: There's some other scientific work that's done that when there's
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: a job description out there in the marketplace and it says,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: you know, need ten years of experience, that if a
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: woman has nine years and four months, she won't apply
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: for that job. But if others, maybe a man has
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: you know, seven years in nine months, you may apply
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: for that job thinking that she's totally overqualified for it.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: So we've taken the practice out of Monday to be
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: a bit more flexible with job requirements. Instead of saying,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: you know, ten years, maybe it's seven to ten years.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Or instead of looking for a graduate degree or a
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: be a just look for the skills and look for
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the requirements. Because we also want to attract from some
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: of those urban communities and centers that may not be
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: a natural path for financial services and asset and asset
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: management SILL for women who are out there, network, find
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: an advocate, find a mentor and make your career ambitions
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: UM and the path that you want to pursue, let
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: people know about it, and volunteer for projects and initiatives
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: within the organization. Get involved across the organization and keep
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: working at US. Huh really really in uh intriguing. So
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Amundy has made very specific efforts to improve its approach
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: to recruiting, be it women are people of color, but
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: generally looking for that sort of diverse background that leads
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: to better decision making. Tell us a little bit about
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: what Amundy is doing to UM put put their money
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: where their mouth is. So in I would I would
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: look back to I joined into fourteen to fifteen, and
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: I would say, in two thousand seventeen, early two thousand
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: and eighteen, I worked in earnest with my executive team
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: and my head of HR to put in place uh
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: d E and my framework for the entire organization, and
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: we wanted to take a look at what did we
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: need to do kind of internally in order to have
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: success with this. And you can come back to culture one.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: I believe that a more diverse group is more positive culture.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: It's more inclusive, it's more respectful. I also know that
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: You can't necessarily have success when something is topped down.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: So we needed this, this movement, if you will, this
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: journey to be both top down and bottom up. The
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: first thing that we did is we put all of
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: my executive team and broader operating committees through unconscious biased training.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: And this was in two seventeen to eighteen. Everybody has
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: done it, everyone is doing it. What we wanted to
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: do was to get some grassroots effort, so we created
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: an Ambassador program. We have to employees across the organization
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: who fell passionately about helping us to become a better
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: employer of people of color, or or gender or any
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: anything else for that matter, to volunteer on the Ambassador
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: program and they run monthly initiatives for the organization to
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: raise awareness on l GBP two, to raise awareness on disability,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: to raise awareness on UM you know, Hispanic heritage months,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: and to bring it awareness. What we recognize is that
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: externally this outreach. For a long time, the asset management
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: industry has said I'd love to hire more diverse candidates.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: I'm just not getting their resumes, and to us into
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: the industry, that's just no longer a good reason. We've
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: got to figure out how do we get those resumes.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: So instead of recruiting just at the best and the
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: brightest um you know, the all of the named schools,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: we've created partnerships with different community colleges. With some of
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: the um you know historically Black College University Consortium that
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: exists in and around North Carolina. We have partnered with
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: an organization locally here in Boston called bottom Line, which
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: develops relationships with inner city students, you know, before they're
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: ready to graduate. So we've changed how we're reaching out
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: into the community. We've also, as I mentioned, modified how
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: we put together job descriptions and job requirements. And we're
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: extremely conscious that when we have a position open and
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: that person who is coming into the organization may be
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: a twenty seven year old white woman or a thirty
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: five year old African American male, that let's make sure
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: we don't have five fifty year old white men or
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: five fift year old white women being the people that
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: this individual is interviewing. So they want to see a
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: diverse organization. We've also the last thing Vary that we've
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: done is we've really started to measure by metrics, so
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: you can't manage what you can't measure, and we are
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: presently women men. That's kind of consistent with where the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: industry is. We're non why why both of those numbers
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: need to get higher, need to improve, and these efforts
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: that we're putting in place is the is one of
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: the ways that we're looking to drive some change. Quite
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: quite fascinating. Let's let's talk a little bit about what's
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: going on um in investment today. Despite very low rates,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: we continue to see huge flows into fixed income. Why
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: is there so much demand for yield and is that
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: going to put a cap on interest rates? So Barry,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: I wonder if we're seeing the demand and the flows
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: in fixed income. Let's think about where we were almost
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: a year ago today. So in March of that kind
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: of March April time period, we saw such a significant
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: sell off in the fixed income in the credit markets,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: you know, on securitized credit anywhere, down from twenty to
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: thirty plus percent, though part of the flow is in
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the latter heart half of two thousand and twenty and
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: then continuing to shoot twenty one. Is a bit of
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: a rebound and a bit of an opportunity opportunistically to
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: kind of get exposure to some of the sell off
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: in the marketplace where fundamentals were really quite strong. It
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: was some of these technical shifts that we were seeing
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: in the marketplace. So investors on the fixed income side
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: who were able to jump back into the marketplace have
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: experienced them really attractive rates of return. What we're seeing
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: today though, if you think about the current state of
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: where we are, where we are with the potential for
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: inflation UM, you know, continuing and thinking about any you know,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: any effects of a rising rate environment. More seeing considerable
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: flows in the short end of the marketplace in short
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: duration fixed income kind of ultrashort duration ext income. And
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: we're also seeing very selectively for clients who are looking
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: for still attractive yields looking at the agency market, the
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: agency mortgage back security marketplace, again where active management can
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: apply a selective approach. So, given your very heavily institutional
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: UM client base, both here and overseas, where else do
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: you see investors going to find yield? It's not just treasuries,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: corporates and tips. They're obviously looking else where Where else
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: is that? So from a retail perspective, UM, there's attractive
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: opportunity in you know, as we've seen closed and funds
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: launched in the marketplace. The benefit of closed and funds,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: as your listeners and you probably know, is that you
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: can apply some leverage, you know, selective live verge, so
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: you can take a fairly low rate and with leverage
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: achieve you know, on the tax exempt side, kind of
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: four percent. We launched a close and fund not too
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: long ago over the summertime that has over, uh, you know,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: a four percent target yield on a tax exempt basis.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: That's very attractive, especially during the threat of increases in
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: personal taxes that we may all experience. Security ties credit
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: is another place. But but from our perspective, investors don't
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: have to only stay in fixed income to look for
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: yield or to look for income. Multi asset portfolios, which
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: have grown in popularity over the last many years, is
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: a way to achieve a higher level of monthly income.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Some of the multi asset funds do pay monthly income,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: and you can get levels that are much higher than
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: just in a traditional short duration product or an investment
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: grade product as well. Huh and and I just wanted
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: to clarify your The investments are typically through separately managed
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: accounts or they directly into mutual funds or other products
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: like that. We're vehicle agnostic, so you know, we any rapper,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: any vehicle that we can put our active management into.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: So we offer separate account, collective investment trust, mutual funds,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: and then the use it's which is the sifter of
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: the mutual fund in the international markets. M interesting. So
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: so given your perspective from both the institutional side and
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: the individual side over the years, how do you see
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: asset management as having evolved? What's different in one from
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: say two thousand and one or or when you and
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: I were both in college, so that the lines between
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: the distribution channels, what was on one side institutional and
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: on one side retail and never the two show meet,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: those lines have completely blurred. There is an institutionalization and
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: a professionalism of all investment management selection. So whether you
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: have an individual account at a wealth management firm, that
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: wealth management firm has a research department that is selecting
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: and doing the due diligence on the investment products that
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: they're are allowing to be kind of offered and distributed
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: through their channels, and that level of rigor, that level
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: of institutional due diligence is present today across all different channels.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: The second aspect of change over the last twenty or
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: thirty years is with the growth of wealth, the growth
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: of the high net worth investor, and the focus on
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: maximizing after tax return. We have seen new vehicles come
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: to market that in the past were only for the
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: institutional account or only for the retail account. So keen.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Twenty years ago, it was less likely for large institutional
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: investors pension funds and the like to investor mutual funds,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: and it was less likely for an individual investor to
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: access a separately managed account. So when I said that
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: where vehicle agnostic, it's because the investor, whether it since atitutional, individual,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: everyone has different goals and outcomes and considerations. That the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: growth of multiple vehicles and the desire for an asset
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: management firm to unwrap active management and to offer it
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: in a manner that helps to meet the outcome and
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: the goals of the clients, that's vastly different. And the
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: third aspect of what is vastly different is pricing. So
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: years ago you have front and loads that were let
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: me speak if I can remember the seven and a
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: quarter eight plus percent, and you now have today nine
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: US loads into our mutual funds comes into UM an
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: na V level, so without a front and sales charge.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: So pricing has also evolved in order to be appropriate
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: for the type of investor. That's interesting. So so that's
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: the past ten or twenty years. Let's talk about the
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: next decade or so. Now that you're running a large
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: group of investors and a hundred billion dollars, what are
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: you looking at as how the industry itself might change
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: over the next decade or two and what are you
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: doing to anticipate that. So pricing will always be front
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: and center for the industry on a going forward basis.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: We have seen margins come down, but as an industry,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: we still enjoy very attractive profit margins, and so we're
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: seeing pricing pressure come down. Whether it's driven by you
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: know zero you know zero fee e TF or where
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: the total expense ratio is on mutual funds visa V
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: where yields are. You know that that pressure will continue.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: So we have to be relevant and competitive from a
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: pricing standpoint. We if we were to look out UM
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: and this has happened already to a certain degree and
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: in some parts of the world, but our industry is
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: right for disruption, whether it is an entrant from outside
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: of asset management who wants to come into this industry,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: or how technology will disrupt our business, and we have
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: to think about how will our business be disrupted and
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: how do we as a firm who who frankly has
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: been running money and managing money since how do we
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: make sure that we're not disrupted, that we remain relevant.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: Artificial intelligence will become a bigger part. It's already present,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: but it will become a bigger part of portfolio management,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: of trying to streamline operational efficiencies, and will also continue
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: to experience, you know, the big getting bigger so in
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the marketplace over the last several weeks, whether it's here
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: in the United States or abroad, the consolidation that we're seeing,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: you know, I believe will continue to occur. So the
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: bigger going to get bigger. The small will have to
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: be truly specialized in boutique and um offer to value
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: in the middle is what has been squeezed and will
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: continue to be squeezed in the future. Huh. That's really
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: quite intriguing. So so you mentioned things that might disrupt
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: the existing firmament of finance. What are your thoughts on apps?
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Like Robin Hood and that generation of millennials who seem
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: to be there prime client base whom they've gamified investing for.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: So um, let's think of a couple of points in history.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: And and I've always learned that when we as an industry,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: or when media as a reporting entity starts to talk
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: in terms of either or or versus or one or
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: the other, that whoever is on the other side of
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: that is quick to say, no, way, that's not happening.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: So if you think back in the nineteen eighties, was
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: at the time active versus passive, load versus no load?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: And what we see today in in all of our
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: own portfolios is that there is an appropriate place for passive,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: there is an appropriate place for active, there's an appropriate
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: place beload, an appropriate place for no load, and I
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: would suggest that there is just as we as an
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: asset management firm or vehicle agnostic, I think for those
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: wealth management firms that make their services available to investors,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: they need to be delivery agnostic. So if a client
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: wants to come in and sit down with me as
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: a financial advisor, fantastic. If they to do something over
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: an app terrific, if they want to do something over
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: you know, some type of a different you know, uh,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: robin hood or or nutmeg or any of those others.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: Than what you're really wanting to do is to understand
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: the client segmentation that's most attracted to that and taylor
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: and customize your offering to that client segmentation and how
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: they want to purchase what you're selling. So I think
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: I think it's all relevant. You just have to figure
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: out how to segment your offering and be appropriate on
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: how you deliver it. So, so you mentioned the sort
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: of tension between active and passive. You've managed to navigate
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: that pretty well and stayed on, uh, the right side
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: of mix between active and passive. Tell us how you
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: managed to do that well. It is a constant battle.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: And uh, you know, one of the recent statistics that
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: I saw this might be you know, maybe a few
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: months older, so, but seven of the last ten years
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: actively managed mutual funds have been in net outflows at
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: the expense of kind of index and passive investing. And
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: as a you know, as as we've talked about you
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: and I earlier and before, when you take a look
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: at where the concentration in the market has been in
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: two thousand and nineteen where you saw UM such a
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: strong concentration of where the momentum was coming from. Really again,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: and those five or six stocks that were returning some
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: fifty to sixty percent and their overall return. When you're
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: an active manager and the returns are so heavily skewed
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: in just a handful of stocks, you're gonna underperform. You're
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: not gonna because you're diversified. You know, you're you're looking
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: to put your conviction across UM, you know, multiple, multiple,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: the different names. Today, when we're seeing more breasts and
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: what the market is delivering, we really believe that this
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: is an opportunity for active management to contribute. Part of
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: the other way that we've tried to fight this, Uh,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: you know this, this headwind of remaining actively managed is
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: pricing is a key part of it. When you think
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: about how the tenure of some of the mutual funds
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: that are offered in the United States, and in particular
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: for some firms who have been in business for decades
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: like we have at a Monday US, the pricing for
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: those mutual phones were created thirty years ago when interest
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: rates were pent, when CDs were twelve percent in your
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: total expense ratio at that time was appropriate, and come
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: years later when you have interest rates in the single
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: digit and you have other attractively priced vehicles, pricing has
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: to be keen. So we're constantly evaluating, in particular with
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: our mutual funds, with my board of trustees, looking at
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: the market, looking where pricing is and making the necessary
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: decisions on reducing the pricing of our management fees and
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: our total expense ratios in order to be more competitive,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: in order to have the best opportunity to achieve an
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: attractive total return for our shareholders. I know I only
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: have you for a few more minutes, so let's jump
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: to our favorite questions that we ask all of our guests,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: starting with what are you streaming these days? Tell us
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: what's kept you entertained uh during lockdown? Be at Netflix
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: or Amazon or podcast or whatever. Well, thank goodness for
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: streaming right over the last year and a half or so,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: so we you know the rules in the house. It's
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: something that my husband and I will enjoy and like
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: to watch. So it can have extreme violence or be
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: two sup be saucy. On the other hand, so some
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: of the um some of the streaming shows that we've watched, Uh,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: we completed Ozark, we just completed what is it, Nine
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Perfect Strangers. We've watched The Mayor of East Ham. I
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: think we also watched as well, and we just finished
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: Queen of the South. I don't know if you've seen
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: some of those, but maybe you can ask some of
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: those two here. That's A. That's an interesting list, likeright there.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: People are always asking that question. Uh, they want some
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: some perspective. That's A. That's a pretty interesting list. Tell
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: us about some of your early mentors who helped shape
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: your career. So the early mentor that helped shape my
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: career was when I was at mf S. She actually
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: just retired not to long ago. It's Jerry Potts. He
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: was the head of the bank distribution channel. He hired
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: me at MFF and he was just a super mentor
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: to me. He saw my strengths, He picked me up
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: when I was down, He challenged me when I was
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: getting too comfortable. He always had a super sense of humor,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: and he was always my advocate and he was someone
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: that um that really helped me move throughout the organization.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: And as I've gone on in time, I would say
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: that mentoring Um. As you achieve kind of growth in
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: your career comes less from people, at least for me
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: in and around my organization, and more from people that
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: I've reached out to. Either it's other leaders and asset
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: management firms where we're sharing certain challenges. It's kind of
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: affinity groups that you may belong to you can kind
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: of share some of your challenges. But to me, that
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: mentoring in your first ten or fifteen years of your
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: career is super important. So shout out to Mr Jerry Pots.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: What are some of your favorite books? What are you
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: reading right now? So? I didn't I haven't opened it yet,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: but I did UM order recently. UM the new Chris
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Wallace book The Countdown Bin Laden Um. That one is
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: something that I want to pick up. And then a
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: very quick read. I got together with a group of
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: high school and junior high school friends not too long ago,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: and one of my friends gave each and every one
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: of us a book by Charlie McAfee I think is
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: his last name. It's called The Boy, the Mole, the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Fox and the Horse. You literally can read it in
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: if it takes you longer than fifteen minutes, you've you know,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: you've daydreamed. It's a quick read, but it is so
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: uplifting about um, hope and generosity and year and it
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: was one of those great little field book feel good
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: books in the middle of a pandemic. I've given it
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: to my girls, and I've given it to a couple
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: of other other friends as well, so that those are
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: a couple that just come to come to mind. Barry,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: very very intriguing. What sort of advice would you give
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: to a recent college grad who was interested in a
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: career in either investment or financial management. One. I would
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: say it is a fantastic career path that is professionally
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: an intellectually rewarding where you surround yourself with smart, capable,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: engaging people. So I think it's a It's just a
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: terrific career path. Start networking before you graduate, so use
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: your college alumni networks, use linked in. Linked In. I mean,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: it sounds so basic, but I'm surprised of how many
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: don't use it. And let's not forget the art of handwriting.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: We're all getting, especially in this day and environment, phone
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: calls have gotten away, but we're getting hundreds and hundreds
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: of emails. Uh, it's okay to drop a handwritten note
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: and be persistent. Part of what an employer wants to
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: see is your ability to have tenacity and overcome objections.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: So if after one, two or three tries you're not
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: getting a response, don't just walk away. Keep going at it,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: figure out a different way to get in front of
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: the company that you're interested in, and left. But not least,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: and this should be in the wheelhouse of the young,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the young colleagues who are coming out of college. Do
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: your due diligence and research on a company ever reason
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: is available online. Please don't come and sit down with
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: me and say you know how many assets under management
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: do you have? Or how many countries are you in?
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: Like the understand the company me that you're talking to,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: good good advice to say the very least. And our
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: final question, what do you know about the world of
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: investment management today that you wish you knew thirty years
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: or so ago when you were first getting started. So
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: I wish today what is so clear to me only
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: by trial and error. And I would say, broadly from
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: a career perspective, it's okay to take risks. You're either
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: going to fail and you'll learn from it or taking
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: the risk will be rewarded. And at the time I
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: didn't realize risks. I may have been taking changing jobs,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: changing companies, changing profiles, um. But I think taking a
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: risk is really important and and that's more career advice
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: that I would offer from a world of investing perspective.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: Is you know, thirty years ago the market was pretty
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: domestic and not as global or as connected geo politically,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: or as multinational and um. Whether it was something I
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: wish I knew thirty years ago or thought about, or
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: maybe we just needed to all evolve over time, but
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: today thinking beyond your borders is super important, really really fascinating.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you Lisa Jones for being so generous with your time.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure to check
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: out any of the six prior discussions we've had. You
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: can find those at iTunes, Spotify, all the usual podcast places.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: We love your comments, feedback and suggestions. You can write
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: to us at M I B Podcast at Bloomberg dot net.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: Sign up from my daily reads at Rid Halts dot com.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: Check out my weekly column at Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. I would be
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: remiss if I did not thank our team that helps
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: put together this conversation each week. Mohammed is my audio engineer.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: Michael Batnick is my head of research. Paris Wold is
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: my booker slash producer. Atika Valbron is my project manager.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: I'm Barry Rehults. You've been listening to Master's in Business
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio