On December 4, for the third consecutive year, aiCIO hosted its much-lauded Industry Innovation Awards. Held in New York City, these Awards highlight the most innovative and positive work being done for, and at, the world’s largest pensions, endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds.
Watch a video (above) along with this transcript of the opening remarks by Editor-in-Chief Kip McDaniel…
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Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening.
I’m Kip McDaniel. I’m the editor of aiCIO, and I’ll be your host for the next two hours. If you’re easily offended by bad and age-related jokes, I suggest you leave now.
I’d like to welcome you to the third rendition of the aiCIO Industry Innovation Awards.
I’m going to start the evening and ask you to raise your glasses. [RAISE GLASS]. I’m not going to lie, most of you are going to lose tonight.
It’s a fact of math. But regardless of whether you do win or lose, let’s toast to a lighthearted, enjoyable, and satisfying evening for everyone who was able to make it here.
You honor all of us at aiCIO by being here tonight—cheers.
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Historically—and I use that word very loosely in relation to a 36-month old brand—but historically, I have used these opening remarks to admit to all the mistakes we made in the past year.
It’s my mea culpa, the way to wipe fresh the slate for the coming year of aiCIO.
The first year, I discussed why on earth we originally called the magazine ai5000, which was a stupid name.
The second year, I explained—unsuccessfully, it turns out—how to not look fat in the pictures when you’re up on stage. It turns out that the camera doesn’t add 10 pounds. Cheeseburgers and gin do.
But it seems people have taken the idea of pointing out our mistakes to heart, and are now doing it themselves—unprompted.
Here is the first age-related joke of the evening: It seems even more of you learned how to use the e-mail this year. I’m very proud of you. With the uptick in usage of this newfangled technology, we received a lot more feedback this year. Not all of it is positive, however. I’ll just give you one example, which I received last week from a British reader about one of my blog posts.
He wrote: “Perhaps you might consider employing a proof reader with at least a basic grasp of English grammar and vocabulary.”
At least we know he’s reading.
There are many more like this—and, of course, many positive messages, from many in this room. But I wanted to do something different this year.
One thing we learned in the past 12 months: List work. People love lists. List anything, and people will devour it. Vanity, it seems, is far from dead.
This year, we produced our Forty Under Forty list of young bucks and buck-ettes, our Knowledge Brokers list of consultants, and our Power 100. We had our institutional assets in hedge fund lists, our top ten stories list, and our CIO salary lists.
This last one, for obvious reasons, was a controversial one. No one likes their salaries in the public domain—but hey, we’re journalists, and that’s our job. So I will just say nothing more than this: Britt Harris, drinks are on you after this dinner.
So lists—that’s the first of a few lessons we learned this year, which leads me to the official title of this speech: aiCIO’s Five Somewhat Interesting but Not Entirely Useful Insights from 2012.
Second on this list, after lists: Not all CIOs like other CIOs, and most asset managers, it seems, love to talk smack about other asset managers.
Now, I’m at the age where most summer weekends are taken up with weddings.
I’ve never been married, but after the past week, I feel like I’ve done the seating chart for an awkwardly large wedding of 350 close friends who aren’t necessarily close friends with anyone else in the room. I hope everyone likes their tablemates tonight, and if not, feel free to get mad at me.
I literally lost sleep over this. I woke up at 1:00 AM last Thursday thinking, “My God, I can’t possibly sit those two together, they’ll kill each other.” Now everyone in the room is wondering: “Is that me? Do I have an enemy here?”
Yes, yes you do. And hopefully you’re not sitting with him or her. And if you are, put down the knife.
Third: CIOs are very good at predicting election results, and they are very bad at betting on it. 90% of those on our Power 100 list predicted in late August/early September that President Obama would be re-elected. But….there’s a catch.
Yet because of a unique combination of naive optimism and general conservatism in some people over 50, I was able to take advantage of multiple people in this room.
I’m not going to name names…okay I am. Let’s just say I am still owed more than a few lunches at very nice restaurants, and no amount of kind words said on stage tonight will make up for picking up the tab at Per Se or Babbo. I’m looking at you, Jim Kelly of Citigroup.
Fourth: When in doubt, apply a literary reference to a mundane investment topic to make it seem fresh.
Last year we tried to make LDI, risk parity, and investment outsourcing funny. It cannot be done. Impossible.
But we found at that you can basically make a literary reference about anything. For close observers of the “journalism” that goes on at aiCIO, you’ll have noticed multiple literary and historical references creep into the magazine over the past year.
For all of you on the Power 100, you’ll notice that my editor’s letter slyly compared you to Lyndon Johnson. I’m certain that not everyone is happy with that.
With our LDI Issue, we co-opted—and by co-opted my lawyers tell me that I actually mean ‘plagiarized’ or ‘stole’—the famous Time Magazine cover from the 1960s asking whether God is Dead. At least most of you will remember that cover.
We also referenced work by famous authors such as Joan Didion, Jay McInerney, and Janet Malcolm.
You’ll know we’re really running low on ideas when there is a Fifty Shades of Grey pension story in 2013.
Finally, fifth: And this is where I’m allowed to be a little serious. This is an extremely caring group of individuals.
As almost everyone here will realize, this dinner was supposed to take place about two miles up the Hudson River, at it’s usual Chelsea Piers location.
But along came Sandy. Manhattan was far from the worst hit of New York City, but that venue—along with many a basement and building up the river—was badly damaged.
Many of us at aiCIO were affected, if only minimally, but the number of emails we received from asset owners across the country was astounding—and somewhat startling. I don’t think Paula, Leanna, Liz and I realized how many people in this room had gone beyond business acquaintances and had become friends.
Or, as is more likely, you were all just trying to suck up in order to win tonight. There is a very good chance that it worked.
Regardless, in return, I’d like to thank all of you.
I’d like to thank our Awards Advisory Board of Rich Goldman, Dan Gallagher, David Nixon, and the most interesting man in pensions, Jay Vivian.
I’d like to thank our own conference team, and especially the Grande Dame of Conference, Carol Popkins, for making this event what it has become. She’ll kill me for saying this, but it’s also her birthday tonight. She won’t tell me how old she is.
I’d like to thank all our sponsors, not just of this event but of all that aiCIO does. When we first started this magazine—at the height of the global financial crisis—a not-so-small part of me was skeptical that there was enough of a demand for what we were providing, from either reader or advertiser.
It turns out, as is often the case, my gut was wrong.
I think all you here tonight—and many of you I see for the third year in a row—are testament to that fact that this industry wants to celebrate success.
When I try to explain what I do to friends or to some beautiful woman I’m trying to impress, they often have a quizzical look on their face. “I guess you can make a magazine about anything,” they mumble and then change the subject. But they’re right. Your presence here tonight is testament to that. So my deepest thank you.
Without you, I’d would have certainly been deported back to Canada by now.