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 9 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
Assaf: Advisory firms cannot maintain real client relationships past 150 clients
“When you have a hundred clients or 80 clients or a 150 clients, you can have a relationship with them. When you have 1500 or 15,000 or a 150,000 or whatever, you can't.”
Assaf: Missing a manager's rebound hurts more than enduring mediocre returns
“And the pain, from our perspective, of them being right and us being gone is much more than the pain of six more months of it was mediocre.”
Assaf: ICG refuses to re-up with private equity managers holding questionable marks
“Even if the results are good, if we're not comfortable with the way they mark their book, we just don't believe it, they're just basically faking it till they make it, and they do make it, so the results are good, there's a much less likely chance we're gonna …”
Assaf: ICG left JPMorgan post-Bear merger over funds placement conflicts
“JPMorgan wanted us to stay. They were great too. But we figured out that because they have this massive funds placement business, that business had conflicts with ICG. And when we figured it out, I went to the compliance people and I called our lawyers and sai…”
Assaf: ICG focuses diligence on smaller investment managers to find edge
“They tend to be smaller than larger. They're not managing Hundreds of billions of dollars generally. So we spend way more of our time looking at smaller firms than we do at larger firms.”
Assaf: ICG mostly avoided investment-grade fixed income for 10-15 years
“Well, we haven't had long only investment grade fixed income in client portfolios for probably more than the last 10 years, maybe the last 10 or 15 years, and if we had it was really short duration, almost extended duration cash type stuff, but no traditional …”
Assaf: ICG's capacity limit is defined by client count, not AUM
“We don't know what our capacity limit is, and we imagine our capacity limit Is more likely to be hit by the number of clients than the amount of dollars.”
Assaf: ICG prefers sector-specialist private equity managers over generalists
“Our private equity managers tend to be more sector focused specialists like healthcare guys, or finance markets, or biotechnology that gets really complex and really requires sector expertise, not a jack of all trades.”
Assaf: ICG prepares to reintroduce fixed income after a decade-long absence
“We're just now starting to really consider beginning to add some of that asset class back into portfolios and are pretty close to done with the work we're doing to identify the managers we'll use to put that in place for some of our clients where it's an appro…”