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“In a series of rapid-fire tweets posted earlier this year, Jay-Z held forth on his favorite cereal (Cap’n Crunch) and his greatest strength (‘my genius’). For her part Beyoncé revealed in GQ that, since 2005, she has employed a full-time videographer to document her every waking moment.”
That is not a made-up quote. It is an apparently straight-faced factoid about Shawn (“Jay-Z”) Carter and Beyoncé Knowles, the power-couple topping Vanity Fair’s list of the who’s who in Editor Graydon Carter’s world, “The New Establishment: The Powers That Be.” They are, in essence, the celebrity world’s equivalent to Henrik Gade Jepsen, the man who leads this year’s Power 100 listing of the world’s most influential asset-owner chief investment officers. And, while the rest of the Vanity Fair list has more gravitas—New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, publishing titan Rupert Murdoch, and New York Times Editor Jill Abramson all find themselves in a deserved top 10 position—the list prompted a question for me: Is this all absurd?
The answer? Kind of. The Power 100 is a decidedly unscientific compilation—and proudly so.
We refuse to rely on one-year returns as a benchmark of influence, just as we equally refuse to use assets under control as a proxy. What we do is look for the large, positive trends in this industry—risk-factor approaches, infrastructure investments, novel advances in risk management—and then ask around (we’re journalists, after all). Who are the CIOs leading the charge in these areas? Who is taking the risks that other, more timid CIOs refuse to? Once we identify this select group, we ask them the obvious question: Who do you believe also belongs on a list of influencers? It’s a painstakingly qualitative approach.
The most enjoyable part of the whole process, however, is speaking to the members of the list. I have often said that this end of the financial system is by far the nicest. There are very few… how do I say this… [redacted] in CIO roles. There are egos, to be sure, but there are decidedly different egos populating downtown Manhattan and London’s Square Mile—and they’re most certainly different from the leading members of Vanity Fair’s effort. You won’t see Jepsen—or David Neal or Chris Ailman, who round out the medals—proclaiming their genius or demanding a video camera’s attention. But if they did, well, it would make for good copy…
“Henrik Gade Jepsen held forth on his Facebook fan page about his ‘exceptional’ portfolio construction skills, while David Neal sold bathing suit pictures of his manager lineup to The Telegraph in Sydney for AUS$2 million. Chris Ailman, meanwhile, revealed that he has had three assistants take an uninterrupted stream of monologue-like dictation since 2003.”