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Carol Geremia

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2022-12-15
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2022-12-15
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  1. “It's not a straight line, but I wouldn't have been able to learn that if I knew it earlier But I tell a lot of young people that perfection is my least favorite word. It's this idea that it's going to be all fine and it's going to all be a straight line. It's all supposed to look a certain way and it's just not.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “That need fixing Something that's maybe undervalued or just, you know, looks like the bones are there, but, you know, just needs work.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Well, it's pretty easy. I mean, the former CEO, Rob Manning, and the current CEO, MicroBears, they've given me so much opportunity and chance. And, you know, again, when I think of, yes, I'm a woman in the industry, but all of that happened even before people started talking about DEI. I started pretty much a kid here. As a woman with my last name Rodriguez, and my resume did not look like I should be in this business. And every shot along the way, I had great leaders like both of them.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Me, it's being outside. You name it. I do ride horses, so that's a big one being on a bike, going on a hike, just being outside.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “How do we put that mite to work in a way that makes our industry sustainable for the next hundred years? And other things that have to change, again, how are we packaging up investment research? I think there's a lot of talk about personalization. And I'm a little skeptical on that because, again, I'm not sure that's actually, it sounds good and it sounds like it's about the customer. I'm not sure that's actually what the customer needs. I think it's a variation of it, but I think we have to make sure we don't commercialize it in a way that makes things more confusing.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I think we're all working on certainly DEI. I think the whole idea of just continuing to bring more great minds into the industry that have diverse thoughts and are diverse candidates and come from diverse backgrounds. I think that in itself is going to be incredibly powerful to the next evolution of the industry. I think the idea of partnership, when we think about the investment chain between the end investor and the public company, we all put a lot of pressure on wanting public companies and private companies to change and do better and transform and reduce their carbon footprint and have more diverse workforces. And it's all this pressure we want public companies to do while also generating returns. And that's why I say our behavior as an industry actually needs to realize we're the ones that influence a lot of that behavior.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “But we're afraid, right? We're afraid to change what's worked pretty well. We're afraid to challenge the comfort zones and the status quo. I'm calling it playing a bigger game. And we're working on it ourselves at MFS, and it's really about getting out of your comfort zones and moving into thinking about new allies that you didn't have in the past, new investments that you hadn't even thought of making, and getting to bold action. And what does that look like?”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Actually, and sent it to a way, not address a lot of the negative externalities that all of this risk has created. And if we don't start to unwind and change that, not unwind it, just really start to realize the structural barriers of it. I think there's huge, huge risks. So what gets me excited is that I'm not the only one having this conversation. I'm seeing asset owners want to, academics want to have it. The CFA wants to have it. Our competitors want to have it.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Of our investment excellence in the industry, our ability to be good stewards, and I have a huge soapbox on. I travel around the world talking about this all the time. The way we measure performance, it has to change. And some people say, well, that's self-serving as an active manager. No, it's not. Actually, if I don't talk about it, that's the most self-serving thing I can do, because I can show up with plenty of products at different times with alpha. I have no problem doing that. But that's part of the problem. Is this idea that we're trying to get alpha all the time over shorter and shorter periods of time? And ultimately what that does, it doesn't extent the right behavior to commit capital the right way to the underlying companies. We've fed a system that”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Challenging the industry to change. And that includes us. We're in the industry too. I do think that this is such an incredible time. We have an industry and our clients and our intermediaries and our trustees and our boards have really, when you think about where the industry today, it's just incredible. Incredible. There's a million different numbers out there, 130 trillion dollars of investable assets. And then there's this big intermediation of all of us that are overseeing these assets on behalf of investors. And so what excites me is that I like waking up to the idea that we have to keep walking into change. And what are the barriers? What are the structural barriers that has gotten, started to really get in the way?”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Very clear, and you don't rely on your own judgment, even though your judgment may be really strong. You want to chuck, as I always say, I want to check my story trap. I want to check my unconscious bias or my confirmation bias that's going to get in the way of making a mistake. But at the end of the day, leadership also means that you're going to be willing to take risk.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “That you really go the extra mile to make sure that you're doing your assessment. And as people watch that, to me, that's the best demonstration. And you bring people closer into how difficult decisions are made. It's one of the best ways to demonstrate leadership, both around very, very difficult business decisions, but also even around people. So, leadership to me is trust bringing people close to the process. And ultimately, I think that when you've got a process of decision-making,”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Think first and foremost it has a lot to do with just people trusting you. At the end of the day, are people going to know and believe that I'm going to do the right thing? And it's clearly for the customer, but also for the employee. It goes hand in hand. And every decision you make sort of has to be around that center of people trusting that you're going to do that. For us, I think leadership means, though, that you don't do it alone. Great leaders don't do it alone because the way you build trust is for people to watch the process of decision-making happen and how you make decisions. And a lot of times it's making sure you have the right information and that you do your homework.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Buy, hold, or sell all of those models and those evaluations are factored in to that research process And that's how we understand a business. And again, these. S and G components, as you say, G has been around for a long time and much easier to measure to a certain extent. But now the data The risk, the understanding of the risk has become more and more accessible and understandable. And so in evaluating companies today and really looking for disclosure, talking to them about their net zero plan, how they're going to transition, how they're going to respond to regulators and customers, all of that has been built into our integrated process of how we look at E and S.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And the same thing with the workforce aspect, the pressure of actually being a competitive company in the future and hiring talent, like great, great talent, diverse talent? I don't think it's news to us or anybody that, again, better diverse companies that have more points of view, have a broader reach of opinions, look more like your customers, are going to be more competitive in the future and run better businesses. So that's just part of our evaluation in really when we think about rating a stock and rating a company. We're thinking about it for a long period of time. And we're taking into all these factors. It's just like cybersecurity. We didn't have to worry about cybersecurity. But you bet we're going to have those conversations with companies today of how they're managing their cyber risk. That is packed in our global research process. And then as we then rate companies in terms of”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “How we have to change our business. So that applies to every single company we hold. Now, some of it's much more material to an underlying business and how it's going to impact them in the short term, the medium term, and the long term. But even the pressure from the regulators to respond to climate change is changing public companies, period. So as a long-term investor, we have to implement that process of talking to the companies about this investment risk that we see as being material to their business or at a minimum need to evaluate whether it is material or not.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, I mean, the first premise is the fact that if you're holding a security, not just for price discovery or sort of a trading strategy, you're really focused on owning a company for the essence of its business. And you're doing it not in a short period of time, three to five, five to ten. Many of our managers are like, they want to hold the company for a long time. That in itself Tells you that you have to care about a lot of investment risks of that underlining business. So, when you think of where we are in the physical state and the materiality of climate change, not just to energy companies, not to coal companies, every single business in the world is dealing with pressure on climate change one way or another. We see it in our own business. We see it in our parent company's son life.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Of passive capital. And I think that will evolve. It's not that passive goes away. I just think everybody's going to have to become more active. And then I think the biggest risks is that we don't step into leadership right now is not the time to follow the herd. People don't pay us to be late People pay us for countersyclical skill and high convictions over long periods of time because we've done the homework. Do not pay us to be pro cyclical and chase the herd and chase everything else. And we would say the same thing in terms of managing our business. We're going to focus on what we can control. We are going to continue to have a long-term view. And we are going to be centered on creating value responsibly.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And you have to do that incredibly well. And so for us, we hope this narrative, this political silliness around ESG, it just dies away. And people realize, oh, I need to really know what I own. I really need to engage with these businesses. I really need to commit capital longer to really create incredible value, not only for the end investors, but the entire capital market structure. To me, that's where I get the most passionate and excited about because I think for us, that's what we are just in such a unique position to do that extraordinarily well. And then investors want you to engage. That's what we do. That's the heart and soul of engagement with companies to make those companies better in the future. And so I think we're at the cusp of really witnessing that. And I think we're also witnessing the limitations.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “The most exciting to me is that ESG will go away. It will not be an investment term in three years, and it has nothing to do with it not being super important. What the world is going to wake up to and is waking up to now is we are redefining what long-term active management is. Should be and should always be. It's to understand and evaluate investment risks that are material to the underlying businesses that you own with other people's money.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “That were very comfortable, especially from a bottom up research perspective. It's more some of the other areas that I think we feel would stretch us probably too thin in terms of the excellence that we expect in doing it in the liquid markets.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “You're on the management committee and you're thinking about long term strategy and strategic response to change and demands, we're constantly talking about what we should be doing, but also what we shouldn't be doing. And alternatives has been on our conversation list for at least 15 years. So whether it was getting into the hedge fund business, whether it's even thinking about private equity, even putting private equity inside our portfolios today, we still come back to the end investor. The intermediaries might love it because it might be a great product that could gain some traction, but it really still comes back to not spreading ourselves too thin and to ensure that we really believe that the end investor is going to benefit in our products with an alternative asset class. We have expanded over the years. We've got global real estate. We've got global infrastructure. We've got strategies like that.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Have matured tremendously going forward. The pricing and packaging side, it's the same thing with vehicles. People hire us for our investment excellence and our research and our capability of driving long-term results. And so we want to make sure that we have the most efficient vehicles, either separate accounts, still mutual funds. We have looked a lot at active ETFs as an example. But here's the problem with ETFs. You can't close the products. How do you manage capacity and how do you protect performance as an active manager? That is the sole reason we have not offered an active ETF. We want to make sure it's good for the end investor. We'd love to do it because it would be very tempting to get a lot of attention around them, but we actually are not convinced it's the right thing for the end investors. We think actually the separately managed.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “But also to understand what we're doing on their behalf. And so bringing them closer and closer to our process and our partnership, and so that transparency is there in their ability to not only understand what we own on their behalf and their clients' behalf, but then also be able to align in understanding why we're taking a long-term view. And so whether it's showing up with content that helps tell that story, whether it's digital content, whether it's interaction on the website and what they're looking for, whether it's personalization of the things that they're worried about and being able to respond to where they're at, it's developing all of that as a new engagement model versus sort of in the old days of being able to depend on building relationships in person and in ways that”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, we've been investing in a lot of new dynamics of the engagement with clients and really trying to understand deeply how they want to engage and what do they need. Somebody said the fundamental truth about business is that your customers will always change. The question you need to ask yourself is, what do you want your customers to become? And so when we ask that to ourselves is we want to help them become better investors. We want to help them become better advisors. And so as we step into answering that question, it's how do we get them the best information, the best knowledge, the best insights to understand not only the decisions they have to make in portfolio allocation,”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Ecosystem, of our economies, and our capital markets. And that's what is happening is people are starting to recognize the negative externalities of this. And so how does that start to transform? And how do you make sure that your business is fit for purpose as these transformational things happen? And I'll say the same thing about the workforce and what you have to do to change there, about how you package your products and price them and the incentives that will drive you in the future and then how you have engagement with clients and how that will change as well.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “But that just like evolving our investment platform over the hundred years, we're continuing to evolve how we're going to get to the best investment ideas in more and different ways, whether that's new levels of technology and data, new ways to interface with each other. How do you do the hybrid world? The good news for us we've been working on a virtual global platform for a long, long time. COVID taught us some pretty cool new things that we're putting to work. I also think on the other side of the industry and the business is that this idea of just making money on risk exposure as an investment idea is becoming very, very limiting. And the reason it's limiting, it might still be a way to allocate risk and make a buck, but where its limiting is, it actually isn't allocating capital well in the entire.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And so, when you come back to then looking at our business and what we do, and when I say, you know, we create value responsibly, investors now want to know that you know what you own. They want to know that you're going to engage with companies in a way to help them transform. Whether that's cybersecurity environment, workforce equality, whatever it might be, all of these new demands makes what we do as a long-term active manager more and more valuable. Because as you really think about how capital is going to be allocated in the future, it's changing. It's changing as we speak right now. And to me, that's actually what makes it the most exciting. And then as we think about it as us running our business is not only making sure that we don't spread ourselves too thin or that we're not trying to chase the newest widget. I mean, I think we've done that really well.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Yeah, I mean, I think what we do gets more valuable. I think what we're seeing today is that obsessive growth at any cost is over. I think we're seeing the limitations of passive capital. Think we're seeing the limitations of short term alpha. I think we're going to start to desperately realize how important liquidity is.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “How we do that in that research process in understanding companies so well, getting really involved in long-term strategies of the companies we own, asking them questions about how they're going to transition their business around sustainability. Like these are all things we can have conversations with companies about. It's also helping our clients understand how long-term and the power of time is the best way to manage risk. The institutional investor understands that. The problem is they're under so much pressure from boards and from their public entities that moving away from short-termism is a hard fight. But we're standing there with them saying it is the fight that we all have to have because it is really truly the best way to manage risk.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “To get the same amount of return that they did thirty years ago. Like you have to allocate to a much riskier, much more complex portfolio than you ever did ten, twenty, thirty years ago, and so the position that clients have been in is not only that those asset allocation decisions, it's then down deeply into the pockets of security selection. So what I think we bring to the table in the conversation is not only do we hopefully help our clients realize that you got to focus on what you can control. We can talk endlessly about interest rates and inflation and geopolitical risks and wars and elections. It's not that those aren't inputs. Don't get me wrong, but you also have to focus on what you can control. And so we pass on examples.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “There's no question, and I've been around, I literally have been around the world in the past 90 days. And obviously everybody's talking about how much confusion they're feeling, the pressure of what is happening, the war in Ukraine, the impacts even for the Europeans. I heard loud and clear. And our clients over the past 10 to 15 years, their jobs have gotten harder and harder. And as we talk to them about this idea that today, although that's starting to change as interest rates are rising, for the past thirty years, investors have been taking five times the amount of risk.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Efficient in terms of the virtual world way before COVID, I might add. But then we also bring people together constantly. We have what's called roundtables where we will bring the teams together, all members of the teams around the world together in person. And it's twice a year and it's one of the most important ways people actually build trust because it's so much more than just talking about portfolios or risk or researching companies. I mean, there's a lot of that dialogue, but it's also to understand each other individually. Understand our families, understand what we do, understand where we're from, bring all the diverse elements to this team and to build that trust so that when you are back in your office and you're looking for information or you want to have a debate or you want to look at something deeper, you don't hesitate to make the phone call.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Work on the team, how much you share information, how much you seek out information, how much collaboration you do have, how much you participate in research meetings. And then we have a 360 peer review process twice a year. And so that's not just the nicest investor that gets great scores. It really isn't. It's deeply ingrained in the teams in terms of who's operating the best in terms of that cross-team collaboration and adding the most value and impact. So the incentives are there. The philosophy is there. And then certainly we have put a lot of aspects into not only technology to ensure that the communication globally virtually has been in place. And in fact, it's one of the big reasons we moved our home office down the street because we literally rewired the whole building to become much more”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Well, first of all, besides it being a very strong philosophical driver, it's been fascinating for me to watch because I've been able to watch it is just to see the extension of a culture going global. And obviously we have our own local cultures and all our different offices for sure. But the fact that you can really unite on a culture globally is impressive to me. And I've watched it be built and I've watched it happen. And one of the things, though, the first driver is to ensure that we incent the behavior. So we change compensation decades ago, first and foremost, to say that we are a team and that's the way we're going to incent people to operate. So you're not just going to get paid on your results. That's going to be a huge factor for sure, but there's going to be a very large, at least a third of your compensation that is centered around how well you are.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “And the equity analyst said, huh? And woke up to that information and putting that together actually allowed us to not own a lot of the things that would have had a huge impact negatively on the portfolio. So it's coming from that research process of team and the sector teams that we have built around the world, the regional teams, and then that cross collaboration.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Our conviction in that hub of that global research team? The other aspect that we learned, and we did this years ago, is realizing that we are both an equity and a fixed income manager. And so we realized in understanding a company to understand the full capital market structure of that company was super important, why not bring the teams together, the credit analyst and the equity analyst onto one team, into those teams around the world so that they operate as a whole. And that, again, has been a distinguishing difference that we've done long ago. It was the greatest differentiator for us in the global financial crisis. We could see our fixed income team knew and understood and started to understand the issues, especially in the financial sector, and really said, there's a lot of stuff here. We can't value.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “There is a tremendous amount of trust, collaboration, teamwork. We all talk about collaboration and teamwork a lot in the industry. You have to make that the number one priority in managing the people. That if it's about you, you're in the wrong place. This has to be about the one team, the whole, about the client, about the idea that we are getting to the best investment idea for our clients' portfolios. And in order to do that, we think we need diverse thinking from all regions in the world to compare and contrast and understand the data and really beat up and debate the scenarios of the future of forecasting what's going to happen with any of these businesses, but also to understand them intensely well at every single level you can imagine. And that's where we build.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Yeah, it all comes down to the idea that we know what we own with other people's money. So if you kind of back that up and sort of pull that apart, first you have to have a, you really have to have invested in a global research platform that has people all over the world based in markets, that can see things you couldn't see from another office or you couldn't necessarily know from another location. Then what you have to do is ensure that those investors around the world are operating as one team.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “I think the pressure in the industry has bred a lot of short-termism. And right now and in the past five to ten years, part of our distinctive message in the market is the fact that when you even look at the average holding of a stock inside our portfolios, it's three to four times the industry average. So, when I say we want to prove to our clients and investors, when we say we're long term, we're not just long-term washing, we actually can really prove that we're committing your capital over long periods of time. We have a lot of conviction in buying the companies and investing in the companies because we do so much bottom-up fundamental research to know what we own. And we think that's where really the sustainable wealth is built.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Run the business the best and to develop investment excellence with everybody that we bring onto the team. But when we have to translate what long-term means is we really do spend more and more time, especially today, what a full market cycle is. And most people know it, but the measurements that the industry anchors around are usually half a full market cycle, anywhere between seven and ten years is a full market cycle. So if you're really going to hold us accountable against beating a benchmark, that actually, by the way, is not a fiduciary and doesn't care what you own or doesn't care the price you pay. That's what you hire us to do. And so in order for us to really commit the capital long enough for the value to be created, we see that happening over a full market cycle. And that's why we're very, very clear about that. Unfortunately,”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “It comes in the whole package. You can't just be long term in your portfolios. It's how you manage the business. It's how you manage your talent. Like when we hire people, we think about what MFS stands for is not just simply Massachusetts financial services, but my final stop. We want people here for the long haul because we think actually that's the way.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “We can prove it, and in fact, we want to prove it because we think that's actually our distinct advantage of putting your money to work responsibly.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “To understand what we own on your behalf and to make sure we have conviction in those businesses that we're owning with your money. And that essentially that's how we build our portfolios from a bottom up. But the other element in understanding that the end investor is who we manage money for is being really clear in the marketplace, even though people don't necessarily agree with this all the time, is we don't believe in short-termism. We do not believe that we exist to generate alpha over short measurement periods like one, three, and five. Our goal is to outperform over a full market cycle, and we think it's really important to define what a full market cycle is and understand when we say we're long-term.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “So they're both important customers, but in today's world with so much maturity of the business, we have had to stand clear and be more clear about who we're managing money for. It's not the intermediary. It's the end investor. So that if I come back to that, then it really comes back to our sole core purpose of why MFS exists. It is to create value responsibly. To put other people's money to work responsibly. And, you know, a lot of people in today's world says, oh, that sounds like it's an ESG pitch or a sustainability pitch. It's like, no, it's not. Putting somebody else's capital to work responsibly, yes, means that we're going to put your money to work. We're going to manage risk. We're going to look for the best businesses in the world.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “And you would be amazed to say, well, geez, our customers, this there was a lot of debate and argument in terms of who our customer was. And what we landed on is we've got two customers because we're B2B, but here's how it goes down. We manage money, the portfolios we are managing for and how we put those portfolios together and our long-term horizon that we depend on in managing money is for the end investor. We do not manage money for the intermediary. However, the intermediary, we believe in advice so much that we do not sell our products directly to the public.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Yeah, that's such a deep question because that gets to the difference of client pleasing versus client aligning. When you're in a business of being a steward of other people's capital or you're a fiduciary of somebody else's retirement account, the importance of alignment versus client pleasing. This is where things have gotten really messy and muddy and confused because what we had to do, and we did some deep thinking about this about 10 years ago, which was, you know, as the world is changing and the strategic response to passive and active and who's your customer and what is your why and what is your purpose and can you explain it we did a lot of self-reflection in that and one of the exercises we went through to get to exactly what you're talking about is first of all who's our customer”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “We're not afraid to transform. And the reason is because I think we know instinctively that if we do it together, we're going to figure out the next place to go.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “I mean, I think there's so much power in that history because what it says to me is that you have been able to change. Says nothing about being old, stodgy, conservative, traditional, can't get out of comfort zones. It talks about that we have constantly strived to be fit for purpose, to be focused on something greater than ourselves. And to have that culture that's been ingrained and passed on, that's one of the most important things in celebrating 100 years is not just, wow, not many firms survive 100 years and the things that it takes to do that and be able to pass that on so that, again, the culture evolves, we change, we know that our customers are going to change. We are not afraid to change.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “And it wasn't my client at all. It was our client. And the minute that mindset, both not only just in my head, but my heart really changed to realize, you know what, this is their client too, whether that was legal, compliance, operations. And I had spent time enough on the operations side to know how hard. It was and how hard it is to get everything perfect and right. And so it really was transformation for me to understand if I could bring them closer to the client, they're going to see what I can see and they're going to move mountains. They're going to move mountains like I want to move mountains. So that real career mental adjustment to say The importance of one is so much more important than just me. And I started to see leverage in that in almost everything I did going forward. The more I brought people to what I could see.”

    2022-12-15 · Capital Allocators · Carol Geremia - Creating Long-Term Value for (almost) 100 Years at MFS (Capital Allocators, EP. 287) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source