“I worked on Wall Street during the financial crisis and learned an indelible lesson: It takes liquidity to survive a crisis. The companies that failed, and the borrowers, investors, and funds that struggled to meet their obligations, all shared a common trait: a lack of liquidity. As an investor responsible for portfolios, and a leader responsible for an organization, I now test for liquidity and stress in every decision. Of course, we don’t want to just survive a crisis—we want to thrive. And there were both survivors and thrivers in the financial crisis. The difference between them was more than liquidity. It was a mix of qualities that allowed the thrivers to take bold action when others were fearful.”
Doug PhillipsSenior vice president for institutional resources, University Of Rochester, with $2.5 billion in assets under management
“The single most important thing I learned is that professional investing, perhaps more so than any profession, is a people business. I know that is a timeworn expression, but in the final analysis of investment performance, the lone factor behind success is people who make decisions.”
Kate El-HillowManaging director, Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Global Portfolio Solutions Group, an investment manager for institutional investors, with assets under supervision of $113 billion (more than $87 billion of which is in outsourced chief investment office assets)
“Portfolio construction is critical. It’s getting that design right so it has built-in resilience. But we still need to be flexible enough to adjust to client needs. Client objectives and constraints are all unique combinations. We spend considerable time getting to know our clients’ investing goals and liabilities in a quantifiable way. Relative to five years ago, we have much more robust asset and liability analytics to assess trade-offs and introduce new strategies to support these critical inflection points.”
Mary CahillRetired CIO, Emory University, and investment management consultant. She managed $6.9 billion of assets at Emory
“Returns reported without clarity of time period and appropriate benchmarks are misleading. Listening is your best due diligence tool. Investment management is a people business. In addition to deep due diligence, you must build trust and rely on your judgment of people before investing, whether it’s hiring an investment manager or investing in a company.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.