YouSaid · the spoken record

André Bourbonnais

lines on the record: 52
first: 2019-07-22
most recent: 2019-07-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It's interesting, not really teaching, but my father was a fairly successful entrepreneur, never went to university. He was in the optical business and built a great business. And what I wanted to do was to be successful at something else than he was. So he was a pretty tough guy. So I know that I could have gone and several times he asked me to join the family business. But one of the things I'm proud and I learned from that experience is that I wanted to do something on my own where I would be successful and to some extent I think I was able to accomplish that.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really like the economist. I think it's a good way of getting a lot of knowledge and a concentrated way. And I think they're smart writers and I love their cover. So that's why I rarely miss it.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wasting time in meetings. I'd say that the efficiency of a process is really, really important for me and making sure that we focus on the right thing is really, really important.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the intellectual challenge of doing it. And when I got my license, I was really, really proud and my dad looked at me and says, never forget that every time you get in there, you can kill yourself. And so it's really this tension to details. And plus the sense of freedom that you have when you fly.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a pilot. That's really a space where if you want to clear your mind and focus really on one thing that I just love it, my grandfather was a pilot. My father was a pilot. So I come from a family background where aviation was a big part of what I was when I grew up. So it's a fun hobby.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Next generation will have more than enough time to prove themselves to our current investors, every fund as especially recently to go through transition, and they understand that long term capital means that the capital is going to be for longer than some of the investor. And as long as we keep the communication open and we tell people and there's no surprises because that's really, you know, if people were to leave quickly, that would have a real negative impact. But I talked to all my partners, certainly Dag, myself and Calm, we see this as sort of our swan song, and we want to make it a success. Don't forget, all of us left a very, very good job to come here and build this. And we all have a very vested interest in making sure that it's a success and that there's a proper transition through time.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the thing I've always done while building team is to ensure proper succession. And one of the things I'm really proud is that every time I moved up, I was able to promote somebody internally. And even when I left CPP at someone that was there. So succession has been the big focus of mine. And if you look at how the team is built right now, there's a layer of us, more senior people that are in our mid-50s that probably have another, let's call it seven to ten years before we decide to do something else. And the next generation is really in there's sort of early to mid 40s, seven years will be absolutely prepared and ready to take the leadership of the group. I'm really, really happy with the quality of the people that we brought on board. I can't think of a better team that has been assembled. And really those people, when I was selecting them, this layer of people.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With probably a skew on technology in El Care because historically those are the sectors that have provided the best returns. And certainly you can think of technology as being one of the key in the future.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're looking for scale. We want to plane a space where we believe there's less competition. So equity check of between five hundred and a billion and a half. So let's call it 10 to 15 companies at the end. And again, the holy grail is really that once we have this portfolio of seven, eight, nine, ten companies, that it generates enough cash flow to let us continue our strategy of buying one to three company a year. And maybe we'll buy bigger company in 10 years or 15 years. That's going to be for the next guy to decide, but really the goal is to have a relatively concentrated portfolio, not concentrated by private equity measure, because that's probably what they also aim at, 12 to 15 companies. It's going to be diversified in terms of sector.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As this rolls on, so right now you're in an investment period, and then we roll on five years, ten years, fifteen years with a vehicle like this, how do you think about the construction of the portfolio over time in terms of the number of companies that you'll want to have in the portfolio?”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Teddy arrived except that not having the pressure to sell at a specific time is really helping us. And as long as we believe in our base case that there is secular growth in the company, and we'll know that being an owner of an asset for a very long time, there will be down period. But as long as you believe that there is secular growth in the asset that you're buying, I don't think it's much of an issue for us. Certainly less than if you have to sell within five to seven years.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I've been thinking that prices are very high since probably twenty eleven, and if I had stayed on the sideline I would have missed greater portion. I think we are very long-term fun. Our goal is not to try to time the market. Our goal is to invest the money, and we don't have a finite investment period, which is probably better than traditional private equity. And therefore, our working assumption is over the next four to six years, we'll deploy the capital, but we don't have to. And without trying to time the market, yeah, we'll be first very, very, very disciplined in this current environment. But second, we will also not deploy very quickly and make sure that it spread over a number of years to avoid the traditional vintage issues.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In other circumstances, we will be victim of our success. One company may become so big in the portfolio that for risk management and portfolio construction reason, we will want to downsize the way our ownership in the company and certainly a partial sale will be considered.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's going to be a situation and a phased that situation in my prior life. So first of all, we're fiduciary to other people's money. So we want to make sure that we make the best decision in the interest of our investors. So there will be situation, again, where we got in there with the long-term view and then we realized that we won't be able to deliver the kind of returns that we've represented to our investor. And we need to think of strategic alternative, including a sale of the business. There will be other situations where even if we're in for the long term, we will in an unsolicited fashion received offer from third party that we will need to consider, and in some cases those offer will be so good and so hard to replicate in terms of long-term growth of the company that selling it at that time will be the right decision.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That thesis is really, really important to them. So right now the discussion that we're having with sort of a handful of founders on how we intend to do it has been received very positively.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So under recycling of capital, just to make sure the primary cash flow from one company will be dedicated to continue to grow that company. So we will only use the extra cash flow to either continue to grow other companies or to buy new ones. So the primary target of the cash flow will be the growth of the company producing them. I think that the manager view that positively because they want to be challenged. They want to make sure that they don't miss anything. And having the support of a machine like we can provide them and it's just the deal team, it's the entire ecosystem here that has information about macro, micro, the competition that we can help them rethink their business model. Because like I said, they don't want to sell the company. They want to continue to grow at any input.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this period of ownership, you mentioned two things that are tricky. So one is that you can recycle your capital. So it doesn't mean that you're going to buy something and own it forever. And the other is this sort of swapping of deal teams. And I'm wondering from the management team's perspective, on the one hand, you're not necessarily saying you're permanent owner, but then every couple of years you've got another team and that team might scrutinize you in a different way. How does that work?”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're going to use leverage in a moderate way, but we will be able to use it and increase the leverage on a timely basis, but really in an effort to continue to grow the company through transformational acquisitions.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way we're thinking about leverage. So, first of all, our economic efficiency and our model allows us to put much less leverage than traditional P, puts on company. I would say that the way we're thinking about leverage is really as a function of growth of the company. And I always give the example of a company I know well, which is a Montreal-based company. It's a public company and they've been moderately levered. But at various points in their corporate life, they found really transformational acquisition. And then at that particular time, they levered up their balance sheet to execute on that transaction, benefited from the economy of scale, deleveraged the company, and then at another time find another company that was also. So that's how we're thinking. We're not going to use leverage to max it out and dividend recap because that's really doesn't work in our model.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Financiers, so we have models and we have a base case, a five year base case, and a 10 year base case. But I think the most important thing other than the regular value creation ideas that we bring in and the implementation of those is really to re-underwrite our thesis on a regular basis to make sure that we continue to be the right owner that we're providing the right input and the right value to the company, that we still have the right management team, that there's no disruption in the market, that there is no external factor that would make us reconsider our original thesis. So I think that this re-underwrite, and if I can use an example.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you've locked up this deal, and now you own the company. And there's a couple of levers you think about the balance sheet and the financial structure of the business and then operating the business. What's your game plan?”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other part is that we can bring a geographical footprint and relationship with governments, corporate, regulator throughout the world that no other people can bring. And finally, the last thing I think is that if you look at the spectrum of value creation, the management team that we're supporting is key in our investment decision. We don't want to tell them how to run their business. We already know that we're buying good businesses. But here the value creation aspect that we can bring to you. And I think that that's very attractive to a lot of managers.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you're right, I think that through proprietary transactions are very rare. They exist, but they're very rare. I'd say that, first of all, it has to come from, like I said, the owner or the manager of the company that sees true value in long-term capital and want to remain involved for the foreseeable future in the growth of the company. But where I think we're making a difference is that, you know, first of all, we don't need put call liquidity event negotiated in advance. We will have either control or shared control of the entities that we're buying and have mechanism where we don't need to sell and we need to determine with our partner when is the best time, if ever to sell the company. And that relieves a lot of the manager of the pressure of the short-term performance.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're sitting down with a company, you've done your due diligence, you're interested in trying to buy the company, no matter what, it's still competitive market. What are the key points of what you try to drive home that's different about your proposition?”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Intermediaries is obviously one source of transaction. But I think a big differentiating factor is the BlackRock network. And all of my colleagues now understand what our business is. And they, in their day-to-day activity, they will think of LTPC as a potential acquirer or potential solution for some of their businesses. We have our active equity business that can provide a number of leads, our family office business, I think, is going to be tremendous. And we're building relationship. My partner, Dag Scottam, is really building the relationship with that group. And finally, the senior management team of this organization has meeting with hundreds of CEO and eye-ranking executive and in a sort of push pull where they know what we're doing and they also hear things from these people can bring us ideas. So I think that the black”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's several ways of doing this. First of all, I have a team where the principal have collectively more than 100 years of experience between Cole Lanigan and myself. We've managed a huge pool of capital and been big fun investors and therefore follow four, five, six thousand underlying companies in those funds. So we know the market pretty well and the situation I just described to you. So first the team experience and the team relationship is important in origination. The other element is we've become a new client for the street. So we've got a parade of investment bankers that are coming here. But to their credit, the investment bank community is really starting to think of this long-term capital as a different asset class. Some are better than others at it and have now dedicated team to finding opportunities in that space.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of other people who have similar type of duration capital, right? You think of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett. You could think of places like your former employers that do this directly. How do you go out and find the businesses that might be attractive?”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, we knew that we would not be the right party to participate in auction, and we also knew as a working assumption that people needed to value more than just the money and they needed to value the type of capital that we were bringing, the experience of the team, the sponsorship of BlackRock have confidence that we were the right kind of partner for the next stage in the development of the company. That being said, I think that we've refined that thinking with real life experience in the discussion that we're having right now in our pipeline.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And was this hypothesis driven that there are certain types of owners that you think are going to be more likely to be interested in the kind of capital you're able to provide? Or did you just go out into the market and find that these are the people that are gravitating towards you?”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're going to be leveraged six plus time. They're going to very aggressive eater cost reduction or acquisition plan to make the so-called infamous 20% return that private equity tries to achieve. And more importantly, they don't want to get a partner that in five years will need some liquidity and where they will need to go again and find a replacement because it's a very disruptive activity for a company to change.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will tell you where we're not looking first. We're not looking in big auction where people want to maximize the value of their business. And it's a totally legitimate activity and there's a lot of those auction where several people will come in and bid. So that really is not of interest to us. So what we're looking are people that have a significant influence as to who their partner is going to be for the continued growth of the company and where we found success so far are in companies that are founder led, that I've been honed by private equity and private equity has done an amazing job in this first round at professionalizing the business, at helping them grow processes in place, determine their strategy. But now the private equity firm wants some liquidity. The founder doesn't want to get into a situation where”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's start breaking down the investment activity. So you have this structure has longer duration capital, more flexibility in what you can do with the companies and an aligned fee structure. Where do you start looking for the types of companies that you can attract, particularly those that someone with a traditional private equity structure might be less advantaged structurally?”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“underwrite ire conviction base case because we've been able to reduce significantly with the cost efficiency this gross to net spread. So underwrite base case that our higher conviction with less risk, less volatility, and yet deliver the same kind of net return that other private equity firms deliver.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“where management fee was really designed to cover the operating cost and now we have a fixed budget approach and that has a significant impact because first we ask our investor to approve the budget but second any increase in the size of the fund will an ear to the relative benefit in terms of basis point to the investor because the cost is not going to grow at the same pace as the fund itself so so we think that there's innovation also on that front then the compounding effect and the fact that we can recycle capital that the cash flow from our investee company can be used to continue to grow them to grow other companies in the portfolio or ultimately to buy new companies without making any capital calls to the investor is really innovative. And finally all this efficiency really allows us to”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“able to make decisions of keeping or selling company, not based on having to raise future fund, but really having a structure that allow us to make that decision based on the company itself. Then the fee structure and the fee structure in private equity hasn't really evolved. I've already talked about the 2 and 20. Now it's not two anymore. But initially, when you look at the management fee, the management fee was there to cover the operating costs of the management company. And as the fund grew 10, 20, 40 times the fees charge were not reduced by the same factor. And that structure is really conducive for the manager to increase the size of the fund because the benefit of an increased fund goes to the manager and not to the investor. We had a very different approach. We went back to the roots of private.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we innovated in several ways. And I think the overarching principle of innovation in this is that we didn't try to design this product in isolation and write a PPM and send it to investor and say, hey, this is what you should invest in. The firm approach, some of their best clients, some of the clients who have the largest private equity practice and say, listen, we have this idea. Here's sort of a straw man. Help us in partnership to build something that you would invest in. And I think that that is really, really different in a world that is more used to divine and conquer. Having been a big LP in several of the traditional private equity fund, I think I can recognize that this was a very novel approach. And then we looked at the things that those investors have told us. And one of the things was the permanent nature of the capital.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've seen it several times. And sometimes it was part of the thesis, but sometimes I've seen very, very good companies being sold way too early, again, because a fund was at a time where they needed to go fundraising again and they needed to show realization or because they had had a good run and they wanted to crystallize Carrie. And one of evidence of that behavior is that you look at some companies and there's a statistic that says that since 2000 there's 500 companies that have been owned consecutively by three or more private equity fund, which means that those companies would continue to do really well in the private domain, have been owned now for 12, 15, 17 years under a private umbrella, but it's just that those transactions create so much cost friction that if we were able to own that company for seventeen years straight,”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“of ownership and then prepare the company for a sale in the next couple more years, you have a fairly short timeframe to execute and the economic environment and the timing plays a significant role in the success or not success of a particular fun vintage. And their very deal focus, what we're trying to do here is really to be more company folk.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of private equity firms have a very short-term approach to value creation in companies. And it's a model that has worked really, really well for DAM. But if you look at the traditional DL, they buy either companies where there's a lot of inefficiency and try to solve for those inefficiency. They have a very aggressive plan within the first two years of ownership to transform those companies. They also use leverage to a point where not in an environment like this where money is almost free and things are going up, but everybody remember 2008 and we all remember how those capital structure put a lot of those companies in jeopardy, quite frankly.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So as we walk through this, I think it helps to start with this point you made about the traditional private equity model and that playbook. So how would you define what traditional private equity firms are doing today?”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we needed, and probably more importantly, of value creation and asset management capability that we needed to really make a long-term strategy fruitful and impactful for the business. So at the same time as I was sort of thinking into this, Larry and Mark Wiseman approached me with this idea of a true long-term private capital fund with permanent capital and one that at no conflict that didn't have a legacy business to protect and quite frankly was focused because it was starting from a blank piece of paper on how to have a more equitable distribution of the so-called profit between the sponsor, the team and the investor. So that really attracted me what we're doing here for the industry is really important by being innovative. By trying to challenge the current model and by trying to bring a different option to the investors.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you look at my career, I've always been a builder of teams and a builder of businesses. And on top of that, like I said, I didn't necessarily choose to become a manager. It sort of happened to me. And I think I did a relatively good job in both instances, but my passion was about investment. And I've always felt that there was a gap in the strategy solution, product offering, call it whatever you want, in terms of true long-term investors. And certainly a lack of evolution in the traditional private equity model had been to the detriment of the investor. So I'd been trying to build more long term strategy within our pension plan, but those plans are long cash and short human capital. So it was difficult to get the origination capability.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a very good one. The various pension plan in Canada are in different situations. Some are still in net inflow of contribution and will be for the foreseeable future. Others are in deficit in the sense that they have more benefits to pay than the contribution that they receive. And therefore, that will also impact the strategy that some of those funds will take. And the latter will tend to disintermediate even more to capture the fees that they're paying so that they can grow their fund even faster.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to put vision and government in the same sentence, but I do think that the government in Canada got it right in terms of making sure that the large pool of capital were managed in a commercial and professional way. So they made sure that we had the right governance, governance that is really independent from them. And they made sure that people were compensated in a market way so that we could attract talent. What are the plus? I think that by internalizing a lot of the activities, you make sure that you reduce the friction cost of external managers. And then the real question for you is sort of a completion strategy is really to focus on things that you think you can develop the expertise internally and be really good at and let the niche sector in the hands of external managers. So I think the model is proof.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Canadian model of much more than you see, say, in the States or abroad, of blending internal management and external management. What did you see as the pluses and minuses of overseeing that model”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This evolution from being a deal person to becoming a manager happened to me. I didn't really plan it. But I think my experience in the deal making space really helped me be a better manager. Then you become the head of the group. You get involved strategically in some transaction and even less so as the CEO of a large pension plan. But when you do, I think that in the field experience really help you focus on the most important thing in the transaction. And then I was chairing the investment committee for those groups. And again, the experience that you get on a deal-by-deal basis is really important because when somebody has spent three, four, five hundred hours on a transaction, they're the expert. You're not. But you hope that your training, that your experience, that the fact that you've seen so many transactions is really going to help you focus on the right question to ask in order to help the deal teams develop.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, as you evolved from doing deals and looking at managers to running a private equity group broadly defined to running a pool, What lessons did you learn that shifted from being the on-the-ground investment guy to managing a team of investors”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was responsible for everything. And to me, it was obviously I knew the private space really, really well. I was much less comfortable with the public market, but had a terrific team there and learn what was absolutely key in the public market space. But I think one of the reasons the board selected me at the time was my expertise in private because the private equity group needed an overall and we didn't have a private debt practice at PSP. And one of the thing I implemented there was a private debt practice, which we started a couple of blocks from here in New York.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dan, my career was mostly on the investor side in Canada for large pension plan and first at CPPIB and then recently I was the president and CEO CIO at PSP investment which is the pension plan manager for the federal employee pension plan. And did the work you do span investing in direct deals and external managers? Yeah, so it started at CDPQ in a fairly narrow field. I was responsible for starting their financial institution private equity business and we were doing both direct deals and fun. And then at CPP, I was asked to develop the direct private equity group. But Dan was when my boss, Mark. That last roll when you were sort of running this group at PSP, what were you responsible for?”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Andre, great to see you again. See you, Ted. Thanks for having me. What's going on really, really fun story to tell, but why don't we start with how you got here in the first place and just maybe start at the beginning of your career in the evolution of it? Yeah, well, don't hold that against me. I was trained as a lawyer. And to be honest with you, I ate it every minute of it. But grant mentor and a firm, including people that taught me that it was really important to understand what our clients were doing to help them from a legal point of view. And I became fascinated with businesses and how they made money and how they perform. And quickly switch first to consulting and then started a career in telecom. When we sold our business in 2000, I was fortunate enough to be invited by a friend of mine who was the CFO of the business telecom business was working on to be part of the private equity group at CDPQ. And really there I developed my love for investment.”
2019-07-22 · Capital Allocators · André Bourbonnais – Blackrock Long-Term Private Capital (First Meeting, EP.04) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source