YouSaid · the spoken record

Ana Marshall

lines on the record: 82
first: 2019-10-21
most recent: 2019-10-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Before we take a step back, I want to dive in on one aspect of what you said about just the public equity side, which is for your first 10 years, you continue to do these meetings. What do you think the half-life of that information is from when you stop doing those meetings?”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before I joined the foundation. So he came back. My director of the Alternatives, and I don't have a hedge fund category. He is very strong. He understands these products, especially the complexity of the products extraordinarily well. So together, I would say we have the breath, we have the depth, there's no way I could do this without them.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the fortunate thing is I'm not doing this by myself. And in no way would I ever claim to be doing this by myself. I am surrounded by an incredibly talented team. Everyone on the team, the directors on the team all manage money and then were attracted to the supervisory side. So they all bring their areas of expertise. Our director of private, Christy Richardson, she is hands down the most amazing venture bio manager selector. I trust her implicitly. We've been working alongside each other for 13 years. If she tells me a manager is good, I mean, I will go meet the manager, but for the most part, let's just say I trust that system. My director of public equity worked with me originally.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you started you come at this with the perspective of a stock picker in international equities with experience in the fixed income markets, public equities tend to only be a certain percentage of one of these pools. How did you think about the breadth versus depth of this particular deep expertise you have in one part of the capital markets? And then a bigger world of a whole bunch of things that may or may not have the same applicability of tools to assess a venture capital manager or someone in real estate.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody has the same slides. I mean, one of the funny things is, I mean, I gave the same presentations for God's sakes. And so the only way to really know if somebody's good is to dive into a stock. And so you have to be up on what's going on in these stocks to be able to really have deep analytical conversations.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the reality is, because I brought the concentration thing here, when we have an asset class, we only have roughly 10 to 12 managers per asset class. And so each one of those managers in and of themselves for the most part is concentrated portfolio manager. So in effect, you basically have 100 stock portfolio, which I would say is still too much. You have a granularity. And because I've owned so many of these stocks, as is my director of equities, we can have conversations where we go deep into a particular stock that we can have a conversation about how that management team behaved 15 years ago. And you learn, our job on this side is to judge how Good a manager is a generating excess return.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And now the same thing. I've done the same thing to develop it in China and in Singapore. The same thing would happen in Europe. In other words, you need it southern Europe, you need it northern Europe. And then as you got those people and those points of contact, you could see how the capital was flowing from the northern part of Europe to the southern part of Europe all during the early 2000s. You could then speak more intelligently to your managers”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most 20 to 30 names. And so when I started getting my network of people once I moved to this side, it was how many points of information do I need? Do I need 10 economists? No. I need two guys I can trust. I need three strategists that completely disagree with each other. And I need to have a couple of guys that really see everything in Japan, a couple of guys that see everything in the US, a couple of guys that see everything in Europe. And that is how that network was built What I realized was between the head of a bank in Japan and the trading house guy, you could more or less put together eighty percent of what was going on in that region.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first thing is, I always ran concentrated portfolios. Once I moved to the equity side, I ran concentrated portfolios because the only way to have real conviction is to really know something and you only have so much of a brain to do that.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you're coming from this lens that's closer to on the ground, talking to CFOs, how did that inform how you went about thinking about the structure of kind of a multi-manager, multi-asset class portfolio?”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of companies in the portfolio or companies that were adjacent enough to the portfolio that would help me inform how to manage the portfolio because when I joined in 2004, we were going from the donor stock that had almost all been sold to a fully diversified portfolio. And we were making a lot of capital allocation decisions. Getting just how things move from a strategic basis. I could talk with strategists, I could talk with economists, but really talking to CFOs on the ground and CEOs on the ground is really where you understand where the pressure points are in a system. And it actually helps you allocate capital better.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think the biggest lesson was how to not backseat drive. Because that is, I think, the biggest risk to having this model of people from switching from being existing portfolio managers to our side. It's really hard. So for the first month, my mentor who hired me here, I didn't have a Bloomberg, Lori Hoagland. I didn't have a Bloomberg because he's like, okay, I need you to just completely disconnect. This is a long term game here. You're not doing the same thing you did always. My managers actually ended up being very nice and I still, for the first, I would say 10 years of being here, I still managed about 75 CEO CFO visits a year.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What did it feel like going from being a portfolio manager, a researcher of companies, making decisions in the markets every day to coming on the super buy side where those decisions don't happen every day?”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and try to get just excellent investment results. So it was a way to marry my love for the business with actually giving back to the world. And so I call it the super buy side because now at the beginning, all I did was go to the first round of managers where all of the people that I highly admired. And competitors would be in final presentations against each other. And so I knew everyone, it was a really easy thing to go out and just pick like the best managers out there.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was on the buy side, as I said, in different firms. In two thousand three, I decided that I loved managing money, but I wanted to do it for a charitable cost. And so, true to everything else I do in my life, I researched it, created a five year goal plan, went through the math of it, and sort of listed the best institutions. And at this time was right when Endowment and Foundation money management was undergoing its own level of professionalization. For decades before that, you had had sort of the treasurer of the university or the treasurer of a foundation serve as the primary person investing the assets. And in 2002-2003, with the notable exception of Stanford and Yale, it really was this move to let's bring in professional”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And clearly U.S. companies do not like this. But from the European point of view, every company in Europe has been regulated forever. So why wouldn't a company that has now become transnational also belong to the same rules? I mean, Coca-Cola has been playing by the French rules of labeling or whatever for years. So it's that type of environment. I think you see it most clearly with just the difficulty that Americans have and American investors have looking at China. And this view that China, because it was becoming capitalist, would become like the US. Whereas what they have done is they have blended the system, the nationalist system they had with elements of capitalism, but without losing that element of control.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's more one, the role of the corporation, but also it's the role of regulatory systems. So, in the United States, especially in the last 30 years, it's been basically very light regulation. And the corporate sector gets to do a lot of things. Whereas in the rest of the world, that doesn't happen. And so you see in some ways, that's why multiples for U.S. companies are actually higher, because there is more freedom for that corporate sector. Whereas in other countries, there is a greater amount of limitation and the corporate sector pretty much understands that they're playing within those rules. And so you see, like now that the Europeans are starting to do GDPR, they're starting to set standards for how US companies operate in Europe.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you shared this view at the end of that prior sentence that the US perspective oftentimes is, well, those people are wrong. What are some of those other lessons that you've taken out of sort of being a global citizen? As you said, that you think the standard U.S. investor doesn't quite get how things work in the rest of the world”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In other words, for them, it was more about reconstruction after a war and how it is that you got a corporate system that supported the re-industrialization of a country. And it allowed them to hire a lot of people. And so the purpose of a corporation was different, very different in Korea than it is in the United States. And so you have to understand those nuances to understand that they will never, no matter how much corporate raiders and campaigns are there for the Koreans, their system makes sense. And for the Germans, their system makes sense.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“growing up in a system that's outside of the first one if you just grow up learning the US system you think everybody else is wrong”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am a global citizen. And so I've lived in Latin America. I've lived in Europe, lived in the United States. And so to me there is no one perfect way or one perfect system. I mean, I pay a lot of attention in places for rule of law, but even then I'm far more aware of ease of doing business. What are the norms? What are the cultural norms in trying to understand why certain companies work a certain way? If you take the case of like Korean equities, why do they always trade at evaluation discount? Well, in the American point of view, the structure of Korean companies is completely screwed up and there's no transparency. But in the way the Korean companies were built, it served a great deal of purpose for the whole society. So understanding sort of the differences in corporate governance in Germany versus Korea versus the US. And I think”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't, and I think the reason I never had the growth or the value bias is because when you start in high yield, you're analyzing for intrinsic value. And then you move to emerging market debt and you're analyzing for like hope, basically. And then you move to equities and it's a mixture of hope, value, growth. And I never quite understood there's a lot of growth guys that buy values stocks. There's a lot of value stock guys that buy growth stocks. It just seemed growth and value ended up being tags of how to justify a style or how to justify a bias. I think if anything, my bias was more about capital preservation because when you grow up in the world of high yield, emerging debt, and even growing up in Mexico City, you grow up understanding that capital preservation and trying to do your best to minimize that leftail is actually the best way for long-term compounding.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say my investment philosophy has always been about know the most you can. You're never going to know a hundred percent to what you're super confident in your assessment. But know enough know when you don't know enough. And if you don't know enough, don't do it because you're never going to have the conviction to double down if it goes against you. Whereas if you know enough and you have enough of a sense or a conviction when it's something goes down, you'll double down. And those are the moments that really make your career.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And with those varying lenses, so you start in high yield, sovereign debt, emerging market debt, global equities, what did you come to believe as sort of your own either core investment principles or style that suited you best?”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, was high yield and then I moved into emerging debt, and then I moved into equities. And in equities basically went, it was all international and global equities. And that's where I really discovered the passion. There's nothing quite like Traveling around the world, talking to CEOs and connecting dots all over the place of what one CEO is doing. and trying to connect what's really going on in global trends, especially because it was the 90s. And it was the beginning of sort of global capital flows. And so understanding where the money was going to flow because so much of investment is understanding where the puck's moving and moving there first.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My first actual job was as a research analyst of high-yield debt. And from there, I moved to trading because they felt that while analysis is really important, unless you knew how to trade the bonds and how people were really pricing risk, all of the analysis in the world wasn't going to help you get to the answer. You needed to understand pricing of risk. And the only way to do that was trading.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a man named Jim Kwood. So he worked closely in the high yield business and he just said the best way to do this is try to absorb as much as you can. And every time you have a question, just write it down. And then in an hour and a half, I can answer whatever those questions are for the month and then we'll move to the next thing. So I did that first in high yield, then I did an emerging debt, and then I did it in equities. And it just always seemed to be that there's always I could find a mentor that was willing to spend the time with me to really answer all the questions. So I've done my best to try to pay that back.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the first five years, it was how to absorb as much as humanly possible from the grades of the business. So I met people that were willing to invest in me a great deal of time. So one of my first mentors would say, okay, you have an hour and a half with me. Once a month, bring your questions come at me.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so even before I left school, one of the heads of the CFA programs was one of my professors. And she had me help her write part of her book. And so that just got me into the business all at once. My whole thing was I wanted to do everything. I wanted to do high yield. I wanted to do fixed income, normal fixed income. I wanted to do equities. I wanted to do currencies. I wanted to do everything. And so I set myself five-year plans. I had a plan for what to do in the first five years and then the next five years. And that's kind of been the way it's been.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go to a shopping center, but instead of going like a typical teenager, stand by a door and look at shopping bags, look at shopping trends. How are things merchandised? And so that just started my love for the whole business. And then it started into sort of what's fixed income? What are bonds? What's capital preservation? And so I just started learning all of that. So by the time I went to college, I know exactly what I was going to do.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was about 13 years old when I decided this is what I wanted to do in my life. I wanted to invest and I wanted to manage money, which is really odd for most people.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guest on today's show is Anna Marshall, the Vice President and Chief Investment Officer for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where she oversees the $10.5 billion pool of capital. Anna joined Hewlett in 2004 after spending 18 years as a direct investor in high-yield credit, emerging market debt, and international equities. Our conversation covers Anna's lifelong passion for investing, joining the super buy side, conducting company meetings to inform the manager selection and allocation process, portfolio structure, manager selection, monitoring and measuring risk, perspectives on peers, internal dynamics, and working through a big mistake. Please enjoy my conversation with Anna Marshall. Great to be with you in sunny California.”
2019-10-21 · Capital Allocators · Ana Marshall – Applied Direct Investing at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Capital Allocators, EP.111) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source