Assertion Not checkable as stated
McKinsey sent threatening letters to Institutional Investor and identified zero errors
“The article is called The Story McKinsey Didn't Want Written, and then we started the story by saying, during the reporting of this piece, McKinsey sent multiple threatening letters to institutional investor. We stand by this piece entirely, and they have not …”
Insight
Narrative writing cannot be taught past the age of eighteen
“But I think that the best way to get the narrative writing, you cannot teach that past the age of 18.”
Assertion Supported
No errors were ever found in the UC Regents investigation
“And that to this day we stand behind entirely because there's never been one error found with the story. And it's a story of UC Regents and Jagdeep Basher.”
Insight
Unpleasant behavior increases moving down the financial services value chain
“You know, the further down the value chain you get in asset management, in my view, sort of, not asset management, financial services. You have asset allocators on the end. They're the nicest group. And then within that group, probably corporate funds are the …”
Insight
Allocators must leverage their size instead of copying David Swensen
“Underlying that all is the people who are going to be successful going back are the people who, Are actually thinking long-term, are actually trying to use their size to almost bully the asset manager into giving them what they want, a true solution. Those are…”
Disclosure
Institutional Investor Media is profitable after abandoning print
“I won't give exact numbers, but II Media, standalone media is profitable. And it wasn't before.”
Insight
Asset management cultures treat marketing as a secondary support function
“There's always that cultural element that marketing within asset management organizations can be viewed as a secondary function, sort of a base level support function.”
Opinion
Most industry events and conferences are garbage
“Most events are garbage.”
Opinion
Majority of allocators aspire to end careers as Ivy League CIOs
“There are huge exceptions to this rule, but I would say certainly a majority of the allocators would love to end their careers as a CIO of an Ivy League endowment, and they will make, take creative paths to go there.”
Insight
Ultra-wealthy individuals are infuriated when they cannot control the media
“The way I put it is, when people get to a certain amount of wealth, it could be ten million, could be a billion, when, there, there'll come a time when they control almost every aspect of their lives. They have the houses they want. They may always want more, …”
Insight
Annual compensation cycles prevent allocators from being true long-term investors
“You can't actually be a long-term investor if every single person making a decision is compensated on a twelve-month cycle.”
Opinion
McDaniel says 70% of asset managers fake offering bespoke solutions
“Again, very much ballparking. I'd say 30% of the asset managers actually changed the way they did business. The other 70% just pretended to change the way they do business.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
US public pensions are unlikely to fix governance flaws for 30 years
“You know, will we get there with American public plans? I'm not sure in the, in my career. Hopefully I still have out of 30 years doing this, but I'm not sure we'll get there.”
Opinion
McDaniel says pensions with 8.25% return targets are gaming their accounting
“Anyone who has an 8.25% target, all they're doing is, is gaming the accounting.”
Assertion Contradicted
Asset owner polling reveals 80% of asset managers provide poor service
“No asset manager thinks they're bad at client service, but when you pull asset owners, and we have formally pulled them, 80% of asset managers have poor client service.”
Disclosure
Institutional Investor is undergoing strategic review including a possible sale
“We're part of a public company, and it is public that we are going through a strategic review of the business, with one possibility being a sale of institutional investor.”
Disclosure
Institutional Investor spends more on journalism after ending print edition
“We actually now spend more on journalism than we did before, because we're spending less on printing and shipping magazines.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Institutional Investor's most-read stories are consistently original long-form investigations
“It warms a journalist's heart that the most read stories of the year are always original, investigative, long form work.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Articles with longest engaged time also draw highest total readership
“And inevitably, the stories that have the longest engaged time, that's readers spent reading it, are the ones that have also the most page use and the most readers.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Most asset managers lack individual-level readership analytics
“Most asset managers haven't got that granularity yet, and they are confronted with all this technology they have, right? You can get satellite data on, on Walmart's parking lot, but I still can't figure out if Paula Valente is reading my piece of thought leade…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Granular reader engagement data will redefine asset management sales
“For someone to actually figure out a mechanism that an asset manager can produce meaningful content and know when clients and potential clients are engaging with it and how is very much the holy grail of asset management marketing because then it's just going …”
Insight
Dalio and Schwarzman never reveal unstrategic information in interviews
“It's sometimes hard interviewing folks like Ray Dalio or Stephen Schwarzman because they are so smart and so well-practiced. They will never tell you anything that they don't mean to tell you or that hasn't been strategically decided to tell you.”
Assertion Supported
There are four PR people for every journalist
“I believe there's four PR people for every journalist now. I suspect it's even higher in the financial industry.”
Insight
Effective writing makes leaving more painful for readers than staying
“And so it's about those hooks that the point is always to make it more painful for the reader to leave than to stay. They just have to read that next section to figure out what's going on. That is the key, whether you're writing a feature for institutional inv…”
