Amy Falls
VP & CIO, Northwestern University. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorexecutive
Amy Falls oversees Northwestern University's endowment as Vice President and Chief Investment Officer. She previously served as Chief Investment Officer at The Rockefeller University and was the founding CIO at Phillips Academy Andover.
1shows
1appearances
38statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
35said about them ↓ Everything Amy Falls said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Amy Falls: Northwestern targets 8% to 10% portfolio exposure to China
“We've sort of defaulted to eight to 10% of the portfolio, which is probably underweight relative to GDP, but probably bad on when you look at market cap and percentage of total private equity. So I think we're kind of neutral, but we're not abandoning the fiel…”
Falls: SVB faced a liquidity crisis while First Republic faced insolvency
“So in one case, it's probably more of a liquidity crisis, too much reliance on short-term funding, and in the other, it may have been more of a solvency crisis, real loan impairment.”
Falls: Long tail of managers and stock positions drags down performance
“Somehow the tail of managers seems to drag you down more than it pulls you up, and I think that's true with stock positions, too. I think it has probably to do with conviction levels.”
Amy Falls: Portfolio allocation ranges are sloppy compared to fixed targets
“I think rebalancing just doesn't happen by itself. It's a reason I love targets rather than ranges. Ranges are really sloppy. Just having someone sit in the seat forces you to say, you know, we're actually way overweight this or that.”
Amy Falls: Endowment fixed income portfolios should only hold U.S. Treasuries
“For us, we wanted to have something that was liquid, highly safe, or would have a negative correlation with equities and not complicated. So I don't really want the Barclays Ag. I don't need a bunch of mortgage-backed securities in there that have complicated …”
Falls: Siloed asset classes sacrifice cross-thinking across investment teams
“It's really easy to know what to do when you own an asset class. Each person runs their little business, and the CIO just makes sure that everybody's doing a good job running their business and sets the big picture. I think you lose some cross-thinking and cro…”
Falls: Access to top investment managers is becoming less of an issue
“Now I think that world is changing, so right now I think access is less of an issue.”
Study: Public managers with annual lockups deliver steeper efficient frontiers
“We ran an exercise looking at all of our managers divided not by asset class, but simply by the liquidity terms, not even including private equity, but just the public managers who had annual or longer locks, who had quarterly locks, and who allowed monthly li…”
Amy Falls: Rejects full delegated authority to keep investment committee debate
“I have been offered in various situations, you know, you don't have to bring managers to the committee anymore. Just do what you think. I always say no, because I don't actually think I'm going to get to the right answer by myself.”
Falls: Sharp Fed rate hikes will trigger bankruptcies and higher defaults
“I do think the Fed is probably at the end of the tightening cycle, but it's been a very sharp, short move. I think it's going to result in bankruptcies, credit events. So I think there will be higher default rates, and I'm not sure that's fully reflected in co…”
Falls: Transition to multipolar world will keep inflation sticky
“That's one of the reasons I think inflation is going to be sticky, but I also think that could be valuable to have more international diversification because I think you're going to have different zones of economic activity, and I'm not sure you want to be com…”
Falls: Allocators should avoid investing in solo GPs and one-man bands
“Don't invest in one man bands. And I sort of feel like I would just broaden that out to just be careful about the Lone Ranger and yourself and your team and the managers. And again, it gets back to this view that I have that an iterative process results in bet…”
Falls: Niche investment managers need long-short capability to survive market downturns
“So I love the idea of niche managers, but the issue with niche managers is that if the sandbox gets bad, they're stuck in the sandbox. So generally with really niche managers, I'm a bit more in favor of long short if you can.”
Falls: Siloed compensation fails in multi-strategy funds by discouraging capital rotation
“So then if you have a strategy that pays people in a very siloed way, that's not going to work because you're not encouraging people to pass the puck. Compensation structures need to align with what the strategy is.”
Amy Falls: Firing one-third of Andover's fund managers boosted endowment performance
“We had more than 60 managers for a six hundred million dollar portfolio, and more or less firing about a third of them was very important in boosting performance”
Falls: Rockefeller University held an unexplainable 20% long/short equity allocation
“Like, 20% long short equity. It's like a lot. It's not crazy, but I asked each person, why do we have this? And nobody had an answer.”
Amy Falls: Equity long-short funds typically exhibit 0.7 correlation to equities
“Similarly, hedge funds or absolute return, I've typically divided that into two categories, equity-oriented strategies, i.e. Long short, because there we assume you're going to have a . Seven-ish correlation to stocks. But you're going to have less volatility …”
Amy Falls: Allocators should cull redundant managers instead of keeping all four
“One of the things we talked about was David's view of culling versus weeding. Like, you could have four really good managers that have very similar characteristics. You just don't need all four of them. So then you pick the two that you think are the best, and…”
Falls: Public manager diligence risks floating along without cutting underperformers
“Private managers, you kind of do a deep dive re-up when the fund is re-upping. And the rest of the time you think, well, I can't really do anything until they come back to market. So there's this weird every two or three or last couple of years, every year, yo…”
Amy Falls: Private equity IRR is easily manipulated via portfolio marks
“In lots of parts of the market, the data is easy to manipulate. Depending on how liquid, even not just private equity, but how do you mark a credit book is very important. Some people market mid-market, some people mark bid and ask. I think it's useful to star…”
Falls: Allocate liquidity to low-volatility assets and lock up high risk
“You want your least volatile stuff to be your most liquid stuff, because it is your dry powder, and then you compromise liquidity where there's the most risk, because you probably get the highest payout doing that, and the chances are you might want the liquid…”
Falls: Standardized manager analytics prevent cherry-picking data and references
“So I like to have a set analytics that you're going to do for every single manager could be different between private equity and public or whatever, but it's always the same. So that you don't end up just cherry picking data or cherry picking references.”
Falls: Northwestern is evaluating private credit after historically low exposure
“We're looking at it. We didn't have a lot of that in the portfolio, and I feel like we're at a point in the cycle where I think it could be making sense.”
The other half of the tape: Amy Falls's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 35 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Tom Lenehan 31Paula Volent 3Ted Seides 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Capital Allocators 35
2022 22 mentions in 1 episode
2021 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Amy's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | VP & CIO, Northwestern University | 1 | 38 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Capital Allocators → |