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.
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Wittenberg: All-white firms will not survive to 2050
“Our country is going to be more than 50% diverse in 2050. Our workforce in 20 50 will be more than 50% diverse. If you're not addressing these things today, if you're just a bunch of white men, that firm ain't gonna make it to 20 50.”
Wittenberg: Impact investors' silence on returns suggests poor financial performance
“What we're seeing in impact investing Is that other impact investors aren't talking about their investment returns, which tells me that the investment returns have not been good.”
Wittenberg: Distressed debt can match or beat VC returns with lower duration
“A VC investment is going to be our longest duration asset. But if you think about a, for example, a shorter duration asset, a distress bond fund allocation, your duration risk is a lot lower, your cash flow is a lot higher, and your return over the distress cy…”
Wittenberg: Diverse-owned firms manage only 1.3% of $71T in AUM
“One of the things we see is that of the 71 trillion dollars of assets under management, this number is unbelievable. Only 1.3% are from diverse owned firms. 3.9% of mutual funds are diverse owned. 8.9% of hedge funds and 1.2% of real estate funds.”
Wittenberg: Emerging manager programs risk being perceived as a kids' table
“The one thing that we have to really be careful of is some people see this as kind of the kids' table, and that's not obviously our goal, but that's one of the downsides of this type of a program.”
Kellogg Foundation Buys Out-of-the-Money Puts for Market Tail Risk
“We will buy out of the money puts that have so little delta in them that you can't really count them as part of your equity allocation.”
Wittenberg: VAR Models Only Work for 1-2 Standard Deviation Moves
“The VAR model is helping you on the one and two standard deviation moves. And that's it.”
Wittenberg: KKR and Värde joined Kellogg's inaugural Expanding Equity cohort
“It is our first cohort. It's being done this year, and this is five firms. These are, again, some of the largest firms. You know the names. Some of the names allow us, they allow us to use the names KKR, Varde and Beacon Investments real estate firm in Boston”
Wittenberg: Being the sole diverse employee in a department reduces success
“When you have a department that has one diverse person in it, That person is more likely to not be successful than if they were to have other peers and other diverse people in that department.”
Wittenberg: McKinsey found diverse leadership yields 35% higher return likelihood
“There's a McKinsey study in 2015, and it showed that companies in the top quartile for racial diversity of leadership were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians.”
Wittenberg: Diverse companies see 19% higher revenue, 2.3x cash flow per employee
“So there's another one, a Harvard Business Review study that showed That diverse companies experience increased innovation, and it results in 19% higher revenue, 2.3 times cash flow per employee more.”
Wittenberg: Kellogg Foundation Investment Team Is Two-Thirds Racially Diverse
“I have Built a team that is two-thirds racially and ethnically diverse. If we include gender, where we're 75%, we don't include gender when we think about this.”
Henry Kravis Views Accountability as Key Driver for KKR Diversity
“The accountability part, I can't stress enough, and as we talked to Henry Kravis about this was his key driver, is he sees the accountability as how he's going to bring this into his organization.”
Wittenberg: Kellogg's US Impact Portfolio Returned 9% Over 3 Years
“For the last three years, our U.S. Portfolio had a return of nine percent, and so we're starting to see some real benefits come out of this thing.”
Wittenberg reviews ETF portfolio trades after six months for behavioral traps
“Whenever we do a trade, we have an ETF portfolio. We make tilts in our portfolio. I go back about six months if I can and try to look at the trades after six months and come up with one of the behavioral traps I may have fallen into.”