The Wall Street Lab

This week we are talking about the placement agent business in the alternative investments space. We could not have imagined finding a better person to discuss this topic with than Charles "Charlie" Eaton, the Founder of Eaton Partners and one of the pioneers of the whole industry. Charlie founded Eaton Partners in 1983 as one of the first and now one of the largest placement agents in the world. Eaton Partners was acquired by Stifel Financial in 2016.

According to Eaton Partners' website, it has been widely recognized as the world's leading placement agent. Since the firm's founding in 1983, they have participated in raising over $100 billion of institutional capital across more than 125 highly differentiated investment funds, including private equity, private credit, real estate, real assets and hedge funds. Eaton Partners currently employs over 80 professionals in nine offices worldwide. We speak about the early days at Eaton Partners and how Charlie was able to experience first hand how the industry has evolved over the years. He discusses his "simple" formula for selecting fund managers and shares his views on what he thinks are attributes of successful fund managers. Charlie discusses how Eaton Partners is able to connect supply from fund managers and demand from investors, the increase in competition amongst investment managers and the challenge of partnering with the likely winners. He discusses how Eaton Partners has always been willing to make bets on first-time fund managers and how that has led to very successful fundraises over the years.

The topics discussed include: 10:00 – the early days of the placement agent industry 16:00 – Charlie's simple rules for selecting fund managers 18:00 – lessons learned from fundraising missteps 24:00 – The current state of the placement agent industry 27:00 – the impact of the Global Financial Crisis on the Eaton Partners 29:00 – Eaton's early decision to open an office in Mainland China 33:00 – Stifel Financials' acquisition 35:00 – Balancing the interests of GPs and LPs 40:00 – challenges of raising capital 47:00 – Taking risks and betting on 1st-time funds 51:00 – Characteristics of successful money managers 53:00 – The future of the Placement industry

As always, make sure you share the podcast with anyone you think might benefit from the information. And don't forget to leave us a 5-Star review on iTunes!

Find out more at https://www.thewallstreetlab.com/

Luke, Leo & Andy

Dan Rasmussen is the Founder and Portfolio Manager at Verdad, a hedge fund that attempts to replicate privately-equity like returns through investments in publicly listed highly leveraged micro-caps. Before starting Verdad, Dan worked at Bain Capital and Bridgewater Associates. Dan graduated from Harvard summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the New York Times bestselling author of American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt. In 2017, he was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list.

In the episode we talked about:

• Replicating private equity with public equities
• Average private equity deal structures now and then
• Leverage buyout transaction structures in US and Asia
• Controlling for risk and bankruptcy probability
• United States vs Japan market for equities
• Doing research in quantitive investing
• Difference of running big and small funds
• The relationship between interest rates and equities
• Why is Dan bearish on VC
• Properties of small cap companies
• Private equity in emerging markets
• Do MBAs make better CEOs?

As always, make sure you share the podcast with anyone you think might benefit from the information. And don't forget to leave us a 5-Star review on iTunes!

Find out more at https://www.thewallstreetlab.com/

Luke, Leo & Andy

Otavio Costa has been an analyst on Crescat's investment team for more than five years with a focus on global cross-asset research. "Tavi" built Crescat's macro model that identifies the current stage of the US economic cycle through a combination of 16 factors. His research has been featured multiple times in financial publications such as Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal. Tavi is a native of São Paulo, Brazil and is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Before joining Crescat, he worked with the underwriting of financial products and in international business at Braservice, a large logistics company in Brazil. Tavi graduated cum laude from Lindenwood University in St. Louis with a B.A. degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in finance and a minor in Spanish.

The topics discussed include:

What it is like to be a global macro analyst

What Otavio pays attention to when building macro models

What economic indicators Otavio uses

The current state of the business cycle

Otavio's view on the US equities market

China, Brazil and precious metals

What steps Otavio took early in his career to learn his trade

Recommendations on how to stay sharp and informed

As always, make sure you share the podcast with anyone you think might benefit from the information. And don't forget to leave us a 5-Star review on Apple Podcasts!

Find out more at https://www.thewallstreetlab.com/

Luke, Leo & Andy

Joern Czech is the Co-Founder and Manager of IANUA Market Limited, an Alternative Investment platform and intelligence hub, founded in 2018. They simplify Alternative Investing for professional investors, co-invest with them into curated investment opportunities. Joern's career started in Trading for a local German bank before he moved into Institutional Sales for Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Just before founding IANUA, Joern was a partner and Head of Business Development and Investor Relations at a London-based Hedge Fund called SCIO Capital LLP. In this episode we talk about the financial crisis and the credit crunch, we provide insights into the Alternative Investment market, especially the latest developments of the hunt for yield and increase complexity. Joern is telling us about the difference of Entrepreneurship in finance vs. Investment Banking, he is sharing great career advice and tips on how to strengthen yourself against stress, how to be mindful and the benefits of meditation.

0:00 - 4:25 Intro

4:25 - 12:10 Learnings over a long career, the credit crunch experience

12:10 - 22:08 Intro into Alternative Investments and the market, Ianua as a company and the business model behind it and how technology helps to scale the startup in finance

22:08 - 26:52 Being an entrepreneur in the financial industry, career and networking advice

26:52 - 34:57 Deep dive into Alternative Investments: lower yields and increased complexity, risks and threats of the markets, especially politics

34:57 - end Some last advice, tips on how to deal with stress through mindfulness

More information at www.TheWallStreetLab.com

Tobias Schulz is an Investment Manager at HTGF. High-Tech Gründerfonds is one of Europe's biggest venture capital groups and an early stage seed investor focused on high potential high-tech start-ups. Before joining HTGF Tobias has worked as an entrepreneur and has experience in the private equity industry.

In the episode we talked about the following topics:

• How to manage a big portfolio of Startups
• The venture capital market trends
• Europe vs US VC market
• How do startups scale?
• How do VC investment managers make decisions
• How do you get a job as a VC
• Differences between working for PE and VC

Michael John ('MJ') Lytle is the CEO of Tabula Investment Management, a provider of fixed income ETFs. Tabula aims to bring investors precise credit exposure. He also was a founding partner of Source, a ETF Provider, which as of 2017 is part of Invesco.

He also was a founding partner of Source, a ETF Provider, which as of 2017 is part of Invesco. At Source we was the Chief Development Officer, with specific responsibility for marketing and broader involvement in product creation and design. MJ was also part of Morgan Stanley and BlackRock.

We talk about a vide variety of topics, including the startup industry, the ETF business, in particular the Fixed Income and Credit ETF business. We deep dive into CDS and the financial crisis and last MJ leaves us with some final tips.

TWSL MJ Lytle

Intro & Application tips 0 - 12:10

12:10 - 19:53

Startups, VC, Europe vs. Silicon Valley

19:53 - 27:36

Going deep into ETFs and the ETF Business - the buyers perspective

27:36 - 40:19

Building an ETF startup - the sellers perspective, Credit/ Fixed Income ETFs, The Europe Fixed Income Market and deep dive into bonds

40:19 - 52:35

Deep dive into credit markets and CDS; excourse to the financial crisis and what is different today

52:35 - end

About making mistakes, books and final tips

We are taking a little breather! Season 2 of The Wall Street Lab podcast is coming to an end. As much as we regret not being part of your commute for the next 3 months, we look back to the interviews we conducted in Season 2 with great satisfaction. As in Season 1, the focus was in finding great guests to share their insights with us about their niche in the finance world with you, which this season included hedge funds, private equity, artificial intelligence, shipping finance, corporate VC, just to name a few. We hope to continue to do that when we return with Season 3 in October 2018. If you have any particular topics or specific guests you think would be interesting to have on the show, don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected] As always, if you like the show, please take a few seconds to heave us 5-star review on iTunes, as it really helps us reaching greater audiences. Stay tuned and enjoy your Summer/Winter! Luke, Andy & Leo

Kerstin Eichmann and Moritz Jungmann are a part of the Innogy Innovation Hub which is the corporate venture capital arm of Innogy. The Innogy Innovation Hub and Innogy Ventures are funded by Innogy SE, a leading German energy company with revenue of around €43 billion (2017), more than 42,000 employees and activities in 16 countries across Europe.

Innogy Innovation Hub, is looking to drive game-changing ideas that can revolutionise an existing business model or industry permanently. The key focus areas of IIH include: 'Machine Economy', 'Smart & Connected', 'Disruptive Digital' and 'Cyber Ventures'.

In our conversation, we talked about the difference between corporate venture capital and regular VC funds, the emerging machine economy and what it means for business, as well as how startups are integrated into the activities of the sponsor company behind the CVC.

More of the topics we cover in the interview are:

• How does corporate venture capital differ from typical venture capital
• How does your activity with start-ups tie into the activity of Innogy as a whole
• Machine economy and how will it change business as we know it
• Why should start-up chose a CVC over a regular VC investment
• Areas of Focus: 'Machine Economy', 'Smart & Connected', 'Disruptive Digital' and 'Cyber Ventures'
• How to start a career in corporate venture capital and what skills to acquire

As always, make sure you share the podcast with anyone you think might benefit from the information. And don't forget to leave us a 5-Star review on iTunes!

Find out more at https://www.thewallstreetlab.com/

Luke, Leo & Andy

Peter Schwicht is the former CEO of JP Morgan Asset Management EMEA. He held various positions in JP Morgan over the years including being the head of trading for JP Morgan Germany. Currently he is sitting on the board of many companies and continuing to share his expertize. In the interview, we touch on many topics such as: Megatrends in Asset management as well as ESG investing and how regulation impacts the asset management industry.

More of the topics we cover in the interview are:

• Megatrends in asset management
• The raise of passive asset management
• Perspective on ESG investing and social responsibility of financial managers
• Active vs passive asset management
• What can you learn from financial crisis
• How does regulation and governance affect the asset management space
• What impact will MIFID have on asset management
• What is the future of research in asset management
• Small vs big asset management firms in today's world
• Career advice for getting into asset management
• How to find a mentor

As always, make sure you share the podcast with anyone you think might benefit from the information. And don't forget to leave us a 5-Star review on iTunes!

Find out more at https://www.thewallstreetlab.com/

Luke, Leo & Andy

Sven Korschinowski is Partner for Payments and Banking at KPMG, one of the big four auditing and consulting companies. Before that he worked for a long time at Deutsche Bank in various countries. In our conversation we have a wide-ranging conversation from consulting, over fintech, payment, banking, innovation, blockchain, and for the ambitious among you: career advice on becoming a partner at KPMG.

Topics we cover in the interview:

• Introduction and career advice in consulting
• Fintech vs incumbents, what are the chances and weaknesses of both
• How to succeed as a startup
• How much is hype and what is real in the fintech space
• What are the use cases for blockchain and ICOs
• What the german fintech ecosystem can learn from the world

As always, make sure you share the podcast with anyone you think might benefit from the information. And don't forget to leave us a 5-Star review on iTunes!

Find out more at http://www.thewallstreetlab.com/

Luke, Leo & Andy