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 40 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
Hewsenian predicted in 2018 Gavin Newsom's policies would trigger Silicon Valley exodus
“The other thing that has us very excited is that we think that Silicon Valley is only going to last for so long. If for no other reason, California is becoming very business unfriendly. If Gavin Newsom wins the gubernatorial race, And he does to California wha…”
Hewsenian: Viewing Career Obstacles Through Immutable Traits Drives Self-Victimization
“If you look at everything through the lens of some immutable characteristic, then you'll victimize yourself faster than anybody else will.”
CalPERS eliminated its hedge fund program after top funds refused fee cuts
“The best hedge funds wanted nothing to do with CalPERS because CalPERS wasn't willing to pay their fees, and Ted Eliopoulos, the chief investment officer, eliminated the hedge fund program”
Hedge funds work for $3B foundations but fail for $300B public pensions
“If you're a three billion dollar foundation, hedge funds can work for you. When you're a three hundred billion dollar governmental pension funds, not so much. Context is everything.”
Fixed allocation targets force institutional allocators into lower-tier investment managers
“If I had a specific bucket with a target, I'd have to fill it, which means that not only am I investing in the best, if I can get into the best, I might have to invest in the second best and maybe even the third best to get my allocation filled.”
Brilliant fund managers have significant shortcomings and require sane partners as ballast
“And this is an interesting thing about truly brilliant people. They typically have a flat side. So when I'm assessing money managers, and I've met a lot of them with huge egos and flat sides, I look for A partner. Do they recognize their own shortcoming, and d…”
Consultants should never say no outright to institutional clients
“You never say no, and then figure out how to give them at least some of what they want, so that this way you show them that you've heard them, and that's 90% of what the issue is. The client wants to be heard.”
Style-box investing forces allocators to pass on exceptional unclassified opportunities
“And I recognize right away that the box approach to investing was a disaster. It forced you to fill a box because you had one, and then you had to pass on an investment if you didn't have a box for it. So one of the things that became clear is that opportunist…”
Helmsley uses a standby credit line to fund grants during market downturns
“We paired it with a committed standby line of credit, and the committed standby line of credit can actually fund the grant making so that we can fund the investment side”
Giving junior associates manager sourcing authority removes biases and yields better opportunities
“My associates, my investment officers, and my directors, who are all responsible for managers, have equal opportunity for sourcing and doing due diligence, and by allowing the younger people to have the same authority to source a manager, I get
Some very inte…”
The Gates Foundation uncovered the massive fraud at the Abraaj Group
“The Gates Foundation did invest with them, and they were the ones who figured out that something was wrong.”
Boutique fund founders frequently refuse to meet junior staff due to ego
“Especially if they're boutique-y and they're full of themselves and all this other stuff. They're not going to meet more junior people, and that's because top man syndrome still exists in this industry.”
Manager excuses for lagging holdings usually explain 110% of total fund underperformance
“The manager starts making excuses for an investment holding instead of just selling it and getting on with it. And you start looking at the investment excuses, and you do sub-portfolio attribution, and you figure out the investment excuses are really what's ac…”
Helmsley Trust achieved a triple-digit IRR from an Israeli VC investment
“We're a big investor in Israel. Big investor. Now, nobody has seen a triple digit IRR out of VC in a long time. I've got one. Out of one of our Israel investments.”
Helmsley avoids re-underwriting private co-investments, relying solely on underwriting the manager
“We're not re-underwriting the investment the way some of our peers have. We don't feel we can bring anything to that party. We underwrote the manager, and that's where our due diligence ends as far as the underwriting is concerned.”
Investment committees should verify policy adherence rather than duplicating staff due diligence
“They're really not in a position to duplicate our work. What they're really there to do is to make sure that we adhere to policy.”
Hewsenian: Abrupt CIO Exits Cause Investment Teams to Resign Preemptively
“Around us, CIOs were leaving their jobs without a transition, and the teams below them would leave In anticipation of a new boss coming in over them, and they wanted to take matters into their own hands rather than just wait for fate to dictate what would happ…”
Hewsenian: Helmsley Operates a Generalist Team Without Asset-Class Silos
“One of the things, Ted, that I think it's important to understand about Helmsley is that the team is set up not in buckets or lanes or categories. We give a lot of latitude to the staff to work on a lot of different projects.”
Hewsenian: Departing CIOs Need a One-Year Gap Before Joining Committee
“First of all, I wasn't given a choice, but second of all, I think ideally that would be the best way to do it because it gives the successor the opportunity to get his or her sea legs under them without necessarily the scrutiny of sitting there in front of you…”
Hewsenian: Investment Committees Should Test Conviction, Not Approve Deals
“My job wasn't to approve or disapprove. My job was to ensure that all the policies and the procedures that Helmsley had were adhered to, test conviction, and ensure that due diligence was appropriately undertaken.”
Hewsenian: Fenton's Generalization Ability Drove His Appointment as CIO
“I felt that Josh's ability to generalize was stronger than the other members of the team, and that was probably a key differentiating factor.”
Hewsenian: Helmsley Defended Staff From Rival Foundations Lacking Succession Plans
“In fact, Helmsley had to play defense protecting our own team From being raided by these other foundations that suddenly were shorthanded staff because they didn't plan or manage their own transition.”
Charitable foundations must prioritize liquidity risk to meet IRS payout mandates
“The biggest risk we have to manage for a foundation is liquidity risk, because we have to pay out five percent of our assets every year.”
Many major foundations remain below their 2007 peak values due to illiquidity
“That fight for cash Left some of them still permanently impaired. Some of those foundations still have not gotten back to their 2007 high watermark.”
Helmsley Trust caps its $6B endowment portfolio at 50 investment managers
“We have a maximum of no more than 50 managers, five, zero, four, six billion dollars. That makes us very different from our peers. It also makes the situation much more manageable.”
Institutional foundations are experiencing unusually long venture capital liquidity tails
“One of the things that's happening to a lot of our peers that we've been able to watch is that they haven't been getting the money back from their venture capital managers as fast as they thought they were. So those tails are much longer.”
Helmsley passed on Abraaj after its founder announced an absurd $10B fund
“The tipping point came when the founder announced that he was going to raise a ten billion dollar fund. We all looked at each other, and we said, ten billion dollars in emerging markets, private equity, venture capital? The numbers don't add up. And so we just…”
Peer endowments carry 300 managers, leaving no time for new diligence
“So a lot of our peers have two to 300 managers, which, and staffs about the same size, which means that a substantial portion of their resources are dedicated to monitoring existing managers, which means how much time can you spend looking at new managers?”
Hewsenian Selected Fenton as Helmsley CIO Successor For Stakeholder Approval
“Of the four directors that I had, any one of the four could have succeeded me, but I thought that Joshua had the best chance of acceptance by the trustees, by the investment committee, and so I began focusing on him five years ago”
Hewsenian: Generalist Teams Increase Motivation But Multiply Management Challenges
“In doing so, it keeps them interested and motivated because they're always looking at new and different things. That's both a benefit, but it creates a bigger management challenge, and that's why everything that Joshua just said was so important.”
Helmsley Charitable Trust Targets at Least 5% of Each VC Fund
“The way that we size our positions is we start out with how much is the GP raising? We want to be at least five percent of the fund. Sometimes that's not possible with a firm like Sequoia, but we want to be at least five percent of the fund. We want it to have…”
CalPERS indexed significant assets to the Wilshire 5000 upon Wilshire's recommendation
“From a cost standpoint and from a volume standpoint, CalPERS at Wilshire's recommendation has a significant portion of its assets indexed to the Wilshire 5000 stock index.”
Helmsley Trust targets 20% safe, 25% illiquid, and 55% liquid or semi-liquid
“The safe assets category is at 20%. The semi-liquid is at 22%. The illiquid category is at 25%, and the balance is in the liquid category.”
Helmsley holds higher safe asset allocations than peer foundations like Hewlett
“Robert Wood Johnson, Hewlett Packard, if you look at what their allocations are for the equivalent of our safe assets category, it's more in the 10 to 12% range. We're higher, but we've been far more selective in the private capital range and more concentrated…”
Helmsley assigns a sponsor, a skeptic, and a director to manager diligence
“We staff every manager who's undergoing a deep dive for due diligence with a sponsor, a skeptic, and a director.”
Failing to terminate underperforming asset managers quickly is an allocator's biggest mistake
“Oh, and I've heard this from so many other people as well, is not firing a manager fast enough. I've gotten better at that later on in my career, but that's probably the biggest mistake.”
Helmsley Trust scaled its Sequoia Capital allocation to $100 million over time
“For example, we built up our Sequoia allocation slowly over time. And now we're at those kinds of numbers.”
Pepsi previously owned North American Van Lines and Wilson Sporting Goods
“Most people don't remember this, but at one time, Pepsi owned North American Van Lines Moving Company, they owned a trucking company, they owned Burpee Seeds, they owned Wilson Sporting Goods. None of which had anything to do with snack foods and beverages.”