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 16 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
Tax friction adds a 150-200 bps hurdle to active managers
“Tax efficiency creates, you know, an additional 150 to 200 basis At this point, annual hurdle for every active manager in the portfolio. That's what you can lose through turnover, and it can get worse than that.”
Heller: Many institutional investment committees exist merely to rubber-stamp ideas
“A lot of investment committees at organizations like ours, Frankly exist to rubber stamp ideas, and it's very easy to get into that model because you meet with them quarterly, and you're meeting with your team weekly”
Brandywine rates investments 1-to-5, excluding 3 to eliminate fence-sitting
“We also are really, really believers in using a framework at the end of our process where everyone on the team grades any investment we're doing on a series of criteria that's very, very specific to that investment. On a scale of one through five, not using th…”
Sizing new fund positions at full capacity backfires during early drawdowns
“And the problem with that is when that position does something you don't expect, let's say the returns are horrific for the first couple of quarters, it puts huge pressure on the internal process. And I also think it puts a lot of pressure on your relationship…”
Heller: Private Equity Offers Key Investment and Estate Planning Advantages
“We really love private equity as an asset class here. It's a wonderful asset for families. Also, it's a wonderful asset, not just from an investment perspective, but from an estate planning perspective, it has some wonderful benefits.”
Heller: Reference checking is easier for private equity managers than public managers
“I found there's just a higher level of transparency often on the private side, where managers can really, really dive in and tell you exactly how they were adding value at companies. You can talk to the CEOs of the companies often because they're small busines…”
Heller: Taxable Family Investors Must Think Longer-Term Than Endowments
“Because we pay taxes, we have to think even longer term than an endowment, I would say. We have to be even more conscious of turnover, both at the fund level and at our portfolio level.”
Brandywine assigns a second senior diligence lead to check the CIO
“One of the things that a newer colleague recommended in the past couple years was to bring on a second after what we call the early to midpoint, you know, in our diligence process, which is our issue memo stage. After the issue memo is discussed as a team, som…”
Brandywine holds only about ten active long-only manager relationships
“We only have about 10 active relationships in our long-only portfolio, and it's something we're always trying to whittle down, actually.”
Brandywine maintains closer to fifteen hedge fund relationships for diversification
“We have a few more closer to 15 in our hedge fund portfolio because it's a little harder there sometimes to get the concentration we want.”
Brandywine overlooked broken culture while underwriting a complex quant strategy
“And I'm thinking in particular of quant for us, which is a space where we invested in A manager that was sort of a tax scheme, and it seemed very clever, and it was a factor strategy, so we spent a lot of time looking at factor research and understanding all o…”
Heller: Brandywine models break-even alpha for every active long-only manager
“So we actually model out a break-even alpha for every active manager we invest in on the long-only side to understand what we have to believe they have to earn to be able to put them in the portfolio.”
Heller: Brandywine's average manager holding period exceeds 11 years
“Our average hold for a manager is over 11 years.”
Heller: Brandywine's Largest Equity Position Was Seeded Over 20 Years Ago
“In one case, over 20 years ago, we put a manager in business, and it's still the largest part of our global equity portfolio.”