Zach Buchwald
The Steward
Legacy, values and the long now, leadership as care and continuity.
Zach Buchwald embodies The Steward through a fiduciary consciousness that never loses sight of the person behind the mandate. At Russell Investments he traces every institutional decision back to the individual saver it ultimately serves, scrutinising fees, liquidity, and appropriateness for 401k participants with the vigilance of someone holding another person's retirement in trust.
“But the idea is we use best of breed managers and strategies from around the whole investment universe. So if I put together an OCIO portfolio at Russell, I'm building fixed income management, the best quality fixed income managers, the best private assets managers, the best cash, and so on, and best index products.”
“Yeah, I mean, the data is everything. And we do have a historical trove of data, but it changes quickly. You think about how quickly the investment ecosystem evolves and managers have strategies that make sense on one day and then things change and those strategies don't make sense.”
“Financial security and retirement security especially took me a little bit of time to hone in on Barry. I mean, I think back to my years at Morgan Stanley, and the job there was very much about sort of like finding the arbitrage in the markets. It's where can we make money as a sales and trading function?”
“That sounds like an HR strategy. I don't know that I had anything, any part of that. But there was a lot of talent for sure, and there continues to be a lot of talent. Some of those that worked on those assignments are essentially running BlackRock now.”
Masters in Business: “Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald”
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