The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 8 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rowan: Alternative asset managers are limited by origination capacity, not capital
“We are not limited ultimately by capital. We are limited by our capacity to create.”
Rowan: Financial firms die from funding risk or bad assets
“Financial services firms die from one of two causes. Heart attacks or cancer. Heart attack is funding risk. If you lend long and borrow short, you have funding risk.”
Rowan: Transparency and price discovery expand market size tenfold
“I've never seen a market in the world where you have transparency and price discovery that is not 10 times its size.”
Rowan: Apollo fires employees for ignoring mistakes, not making bad decisions
“You do not get fired here for making a bad decision. You get fired here for not recognizing it, or not owning it, and not fixing it.”
Rowan: Investment firms cannot scale without serving a fundamental societal good
“When you are a small firm, you can be a good deal shop. But when you want to get large, you have to serve a fundamental good, otherwise the societal pressure, the government regulation, the forces around you constrain you.”
Rowan: Credit management demands total risk aversion unlike equity investing
“In credit, you only get your principal and interest. You should not be around risk taking. As a rule, you should be fully diversified. In the equity business, you actually get paid for risk taking.”
Rowan: Banks are built for short-term debt, not long-term financing
“The bank market is the best source of financing on a short-term basis anywhere in the world. A bank borrows short deposits and lends short. A bank is the best short-term lender. It is not a good long-term lender.”
Marc Rowan: Lenders cannot make credit decisions on 20- to 30-year horizons
“As a lender, you know this. You are diversified. You are senior where you perceive risk. You look for a hard collateral. And you accept that you can't make a decision for 20 or 30 years. You can make a decision for three or five or seven years in what we're do…”