Opinion certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Blood: Major financial firm bankruptcies stem mostly from cultural failures

David Blood · Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143) · Jun 22, 2020 · at 9:47

David Blood, co-founder of Generation Investment Management and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, reflects on analyzing Wall Street firm cultures throughout his career.

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“Turns out that since I've been in finance now 35 years, there have been, I think, probably 10, 15 major organizations that have gone bankrupt, and they've mostly gone out of business for failures of culture and business principles”

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More from David Blood

Disclosure
Blood: Generation has avoided hydrocarbon investments for a decade on economic grounds
“So, for example, we have not owned energy businesses for a decade. We've not owned hydrocarbon businesses because we don't think they're priced properly. They haven't really priced the fact of climate change, and we think they have a significant stranded asset…”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 29:08 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Assertion Supported
David Blood: Generation's profits come entirely from performance fees, not AUM
“And so very specifically, since we founded the firm in 2004, Almost to the penny, every dollar that we've earned in performance fee has been our profit. We've not had profits based on asset center management.”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 23:45 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Disclosure
Blood: Generation invested early in Facebook but exited over data practices
“We were investors in Facebook. Early on. And we ultimately decided that how they were treating information, and how they were dealing with some of their challenges, which they still have, was unsatisfactory to how we were thinking about sustainability.”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 31:50 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Disclosure
Blood: Generation uses simultaneous voting across the team to approve investments
“Mark and Miguel cannot buy something unless it's on the focus list, and the focus list is voted on by the entire global equity team. We wouldn't necessarily call it has to be unanimous, but we clearly tried to ensure that the votes are equally based, if you wi…”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 37:56 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blood: Asset owners will require impact-based performance measurement within years
“And we think actually, as time goes on, and by time we mean couple of years, not decades, that all investors, all asset owners will be required, will require of us, and probably their own stakeholders will require that their investment performance be based upo…”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 43:57 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Insight
Blood: Employee treatment and governance structures predict corporate success
“Understanding companies and understanding management teams, you could get a sense of whether they would be successful or not dependent upon how they treated their people, their compensation structures, their leadership structures, their governance structures.”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 10:12 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
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