[REPLAY] - Ashby Monk – Asset Giant Futurist (Capital Allocators, EP.29)
Episode
60 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Career Growth, Personal Finance, Relationships
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Fee transparency drives organizational change: CalPERS paid $4 billion in private equity carry over five years to GPs alone. When boards see total external fees alongside minimal internal budgets, they consistently ask if there's another way to produce returns, catalyzing internal team building.
- ✓Canadian Crown Corporation model enables talent: Double arms-length governance structures allow Canadian pension boards to set competitive compensation independently, paying CIOs $7 million annually to compete with external managers. This stomachs political criticism but reduces billions in external fees through internal management of public equities, infrastructure, and real estate.
- ✓UC Endowment leverages ecosystem for aligned terms: University of California uses 10 campuses, five major hospitals, three national labs, and $10 billion in R&D to provide privileged deal flow and research access to external managers, securing partnership terms that traditional asset owners cannot negotiate through capital alone.
- ✓Prize-linked savings converts lottery spending: Long Game mobile app awards variable prizes based on savings deposits while preserving principal, targeting 63 percent of Americans lacking $500 in savings. The American Savings and Promotion Act legalized this structure, offering better odds than state lotteries to redirect gambling expenditures into personal wealth building.
- ✓Alternative data flows through hedge funds first: Startups using satellite imagery of parking lots and oil wells, plus other alternative data sources, initially sell to hedge funds who fund early research. This creates potential for signals to eventually reach broader markets once inefficiencies diminish, seeding invest-tech industry development.
What It Covers
Ashby Monk explains how large pension funds like Canadian plans and New Zealand Superfund are reducing fees by building internal investment teams, creating aligned partnerships with managers, and designing innovative structures for climate infrastructure and venture capital investing.
Key Questions Answered
- •Fee transparency drives organizational change: CalPERS paid $4 billion in private equity carry over five years to GPs alone. When boards see total external fees alongside minimal internal budgets, they consistently ask if there's another way to produce returns, catalyzing internal team building.
- •Canadian Crown Corporation model enables talent: Double arms-length governance structures allow Canadian pension boards to set competitive compensation independently, paying CIOs $7 million annually to compete with external managers. This stomachs political criticism but reduces billions in external fees through internal management of public equities, infrastructure, and real estate.
- •UC Endowment leverages ecosystem for aligned terms: University of California uses 10 campuses, five major hospitals, three national labs, and $10 billion in R&D to provide privileged deal flow and research access to external managers, securing partnership terms that traditional asset owners cannot negotiate through capital alone.
- •Prize-linked savings converts lottery spending: Long Game mobile app awards variable prizes based on savings deposits while preserving principal, targeting 63 percent of Americans lacking $500 in savings. The American Savings and Promotion Act legalized this structure, offering better odds than state lotteries to redirect gambling expenditures into personal wealth building.
- •Alternative data flows through hedge funds first: Startups using satellite imagery of parking lots and oil wells, plus other alternative data sources, initially sell to hedge funds who fund early research. This creates potential for signals to eventually reach broader markets once inefficiencies diminish, seeding invest-tech industry development.
Notable Moment
Monk describes his vision for pension funds to collect deal rights from university IP offices and campus seed funds, then automatically take 10 percent pro rata stakes whenever reputable venture firms like Sequoia invest, creating top-decile venture portfolios at near-zero cost through systematic co-investment.
Episode Transcript
Capital Allocators is brought to you by AlphaSense. AlphaSense connects and accelerates every element of your research process, and I'm excited they chose to be our lead sponsor this year. One of the hardest parts of investing is seeing what's shifting before everyone else does. For decades, only the largest hedge funds could afford extensive channel research programs to spot inflection points before earnings and stay ahead of consensus. But channel checks are no longer the luxury they once were. They've become table stakes, and that's where AlphaSense comes in. AlphaSense is redefining channel research. AlphaSense channel checks deliver a continuously refreshed view of demand, pricing, and competitive dynamics, powered by interviews with operators across the value chain. Thousands of consistent channel conversations every month help investors spot inflection points weeks before they show up in earnings or consensus estimates. And the best part, these proprietary channel checks integrate directly into AlphaSense's research platform, which is trusted by 75% of the world's top hedge funds with access to over 500,000,000 premium sources. From company filings and broker research to news trade journals and more than 240,000 expert call transcripts. That context turns raw signal into conviction. The first to see wins. The rest follow. Check it out for yourself at alpha-sense.com/capital. Capital Allocators is also brought to you by SRS Acquium. Wanna make sure your M and A processes aren't stuck in the past? Partner with a company that's been defining the future of deal making for nearly two decades instead. When it comes to M and A innovation, SRS Acquium has reshaped the way that deals get done, streamlining processes for maximum efficiency and minimum headaches. Professional shareholder representation? Online m and a payments? Digital stockholder solicitation? SRS Acquium pioneered each and continues to set the bar for game changing innovation. So leave the days of disjointed deal management behind and define your future with SRS Acquium, the smartest way to run a deal. Learn more at srsacquium.com. That's srsacquiom.com. I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. My guest on today's show is doctor Ashby Monk, the executive and research director of the Stanford University Global Project Center. Ashby is also the senior research associate at the University of Oxford, a senior advisor to the chief investment officer of the University of California, and the cofounder of Long Game. Ash advises sovereign wealth funds founder of Long Game. Ash advises sovereign wealth funds and large pension funds and is involved with a bunch of fintech companies, all of which attempt to create innovative solutions to fixing the financial picture for individuals, pensions, and countries in the years ahead. Our conversation starts with ASHA's early work experience and path through academia and flows into an exploration of next generation, lower cost approaches to active management for large asset owners. We touch on investing in public equity, private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds using examples from the Canadian and Australian pensions, New Zealand Super Fund, and University of California …
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