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 28 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
Hochfelder: Public alternative managers prioritize AUM growth over investment selectivity
“You've seen more and more mega cap managers that are publicly traded, alts asset managers. Their share price is ultimately going to be a function of their AUM growth. People follow incentives. They are doing the right thing by their shareholders to grow. We ha…”
Lasry: Selling a minority stake instead of an IPO was a mistake
“I actually think we made a mistake. Morgan Stanley's been a great partner. That wasn't the mistake. I think at the time, the decision was, do you sell a stake to a financial institution such as Morgan Stanley, or do you go public?”
Levy: An auditor's opinion could have triggered Morgan Stanley's 2008 collapse
“There were issues that if a given fund received a going concern opinion from the auditors, it could trigger the ISDAs across the entire Morgan Stanley firm and take it down.”
Cocke: Wall Street cap intro pitches prioritize marketability over fund performance
“I started to realize, you know, what's happening is the Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley's of the world are getting these guys in their cap intro department and they're creating their presentations for them, which it occurred to me what that really meant is th…”
Visser: Morgan Stanley was culturally unprepared for emerging markets in early 2000s
“Emerging markets, Morgan Stanley was not set up for that. They didn't understand it. It was a cultural thing and their business was in New York and Japan and Europe.”
Hochfelder: Pooled fund incentives force holistic thinking over regional bias
“The incentive structures within our funds became pooled incentive structures. Instead of having individual deal level or regional level incentives, we have pooled incentives. That shifts behavior and forces people to work and think holistically.”
Hochfelder: Separate regional investment committees hinder global comparative perspective
“When you have, for example, an Asia Investment Committee and a Europe Investment Committee, you're not getting the full benefit of that perspective that matters.”
Hochfelder: Real estate requires active asset transformation over passive holding
“For the assets we own, it's not just buy and hold, it's buy and change. You can transform these assets. That's one of the things that's less understood about both real estate and infrastructure is how active those assets are. It's not Just that durable cash fl…”
Hochfelder: Morgan Stanley pulled back from U.S. office real estate pre-COVID
“Another space that we avoided and pulled back on pretty meaningfully was U.S. Office pre-COVID. Not because we were so brilliant to think Americans wanted to work in their pajamas, because having that global perspective enabled us to understand the capex inten…”
Morgan Stanley Real Assets targets deglobalization, aging demographics, and power needs
“Today, we know we're living in a multipolar world where there's a U-turn on globalization. We know we have aging demographics in most global markets, increased power needs. We position our portfolios and our investment strategies to capitalize on those structu…”
Hochfelder: Morgan Stanley pulled back on life sciences real estate oversupply
“One thing that we had been investing in but pulled back pretty dramatically on was life sciences.”
Hochfelder: Morgan Stanley is seeing all-time high rents in prime office assets
“We look across our office assets. We are seeing all time high rents. That demand for the best of the best office has never been stronger in many markets.”
Hochfelder: Real estate now requires outsized income growth over cheap borrowing
“If you think about post GFC, multiple expansion or cheap borrowing drove a lot of return. Today, we live in an environment with rates more elevated, relatively range bound. That means you need to be invested in those spaces where you can see outsized income gr…”
Levy: Morgan Stanley real estate funds dropped to 0.2x and 0.3x multiples
“I felt for the investors that one fund was a .2 multiple, another fund was a .3 multiple.”
Sack: Captive PE funds are probably not immune to bank balance sheet shocks
“In a rough environment with a huge balance sheet mistake, do I really think that our investment funds are fully immune from some of the macro noise that comes with being part of a big institution? Probably not.”
Brosens: Goldman Sachs was considered a 'middling firm' early in his career
“It was viewed as kind of a middling firm at the time. The big firms at the time were First Boston, Morgan Stanley. The banks really weren't players in the space. JP Morgan wasn't really considered a competitor. There were other smaller firms, Bear Stearns, et …”
Fleming: Gorman's wealth management push successfully differentiated Morgan Stanley
“I thought the business model that James had started to put together was the right one. They had asset management, they had wealth management, they had the investment bank. But the wealth management to me was a key part Of what could differentiate them, and no …”
DeLong: Created the First Performance Evaluation in Wall Street History
“I couldn't believe the way people were compensated. I couldn't believe the way people were promoted. It was literally an old boy system, and I went right after that, and helped create the first performance evaluation in the history of Wall Street.”
Morgan Stanley invests heavily in power and fiber for AI data centers
“On the infra side, we've been doing a lot with power and fiber production. The things that are ultimately powering these AI focused data centers.”
Hochfelder led a 2006 acquisition of 23 acres of Boston Seaport parking
“The Boston seaport
Was an investment I led as an associate back in oh six. We bought 23 acres of surface level parking.”
Hochfelder: Real estate investing tracks shifts in fundamental human behavior
“Real estate is just a function of how people use space, where they want to live, how they want to work, how they want to consume goods, whether it's in store or online, how they want a vacation. That constantly brings you back to basic judgments about how we l…”
Spielman: Most trading floor workers lived in quiet desperation for bonus checks
“I saw a majority of the people, as I say, living out the Henry David Thoreau quote, which is the mass of people lead lives of quiet desperation. There were people there who absolutely loved what they did. They had Bloomberg terminals at home. They read Barron'…”
Fleming: Viking Global backed Rockefeller Capital shortly after Morgan Stanley exit
“Our private equity partner is Viking through their private vehicle, and they've been great partners. They and I talked about doing something like this virtually from the first month or two I left Morgan Stanley.”
Fleming: Rockefeller's fastest growth is in external manager allocations
“The business that we've grown the most since we bought the firm is more external because that's the model they're used to. So if we hire a team from Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley, UBS, JP Morgan, they're used to more of an external manager model.”
DeLong: Returned to academia because Wall Street culture avoided substantive conversations
“When I was at Morgan Stanley, and I would have what I would call something other than deeply shallow conversations. We would have substantive conversations with folks, and then when they'd get back in the group, it was back to golf, and it was back to redecora…”
DeLong: Left Morgan Stanley After Compromising Candor With John Mack
“And I knew it was time to go when I started to tell John Mack what he wanted to hear as opposed to what was in my heart and I knew he needed to hear.”
Morgan Stanley fell from 4x book value in 2000 to 0.5x
“I picked up the broker dealers in 99, 98, 99, when they were all the IP ago, you know, and I joined Morgan Stanley when it was trading at about four times book value. And as we well know, it went to, I think it troughed at .5 a book.”
Barber: Wall Street leaders in 1970s and 1980s rose through syndicate desks
“And if you go back in time, John Goodfriend, the legendary CEO of Solomon brothers had been the syndicate manager of Solomon brothers, Ralph D'Annunzio, the legendary CEO of Kidder Peabody had been the syndicate manager. Tommy Saunders, a very legendary Morgan…”