Name the most noticeable generational divide in investment style between sub-40-year-old investors and baby boomers.
The under-40 investors prefer to invest more in experiences than things.
Your least favorite part of being an asset owner is...?
Getting collared at conferences.
The manager you don’t currently work with whose brain you’d most like to pick for an hour is...?
John Maynard Keynes when he was a money manager, between 1927 and 1946.
... and where would that meeting take place?
Keynes was famously part of the Bloomsbury Set, so we’d meet there. Gordon Square, WC1, London, to be exact.
Describe the weirdest interaction you’ve had with an asset manager.
Some colleagues and I were going through due diligence in a meeting with an investment manager. I turned the conversation to focus on its responsible investment practices. The next thing I knew, I was promptly ushered into a side room and introduced to the firm’s legal counsel!
What asset class or investment troubles you most right now—and why?
Low carbon investing—how do you avoid the losers?
Name your favorite food and drink.
My grandmother’s chopped liver, and my wife’s chicken fesenjān with Persian rice.
What’s the wildest institutional portfolio you’ve seen?
Anyone with ill-thought-out bets on energy.
Name a cultural aspect of asset management that gets under your skin.
Being afraid to admit to mistakes, and learn from them.
Donald Trump is ________.
Unfortunately, not to be underestimated.
Name your four-member investment dream team for your own family office.
Jeremy Grantham of GMO, Terry Smith of UK boutique Fundsmith, Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, and Elon Musk of Tesla. A dream team maybe, but there are bound to be some bust-upson the way!
What’s the biggest investment or career misstep you’ve made?
Back in 2010 I suggested investing in European Union carbon credits to hedge out our future climate change and carbon risk, at an average price of around €30 ($34) per metric ton. Luckily, no one else agreed, and by 2013 the price had fallen to just under €3 per metric ton.
What should be an investment trend, but isn’t (yet)?
PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund recently invested in a marijuana company...
