YouSaid · the spoken record

David Layton

lines on the record: 80
first: 2023-02-24
most recent: 2023-02-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I often look at the public markets in a little green within thee, sometimes to be honest, because in the public markets, you find a sector that you like. I find a company that you like. You hit the buy button and you create that exposure for yourself or your clients.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leverage levels have changed. And that means there's a couple hundred basis points of returns that's come out of our industry if you're just doing things the same way. So you need to be investing in a different profile of business. You can't just hope to lever up a good company and generate a return that way. Today, you have to find sectors that are transforming, right? businesses that we can transform through active ownership in order to generate the same type of returns that have happened. And we think that that's going to be a critical part moving forward. So we put all of our emphasis today from a sourcing and origination perspective around thematic work. That's a big topic.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing work well before a company sale process to make sure that when that company comes up for sale that we are expert on that space, we're expert on that subsector and we're doing confirmatory work, we're not starting from scratch. That's something that's really emphasized within our culture. If you think about the current environment, rates have changed”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I came up in the industry, when a company would come up for sale, we would have four or five months to research that business and to do due diligence and to meet the management team and to build our models. And that's enough time to get to know a space and to get to know a sector and to get to know a company and decide if you want to make an investment or not. With the competition that's increased within our space, it's more like four, five, six weeks that you need to make that decision. And you just can't do the type of work that you need to do to write a large check in four, five, six weeks and to buy an entire company. And so we have really put emphasis to our team on”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's just a fantastic environment. And the people that are there are so happy. It's one of the highest quality of life anywhere that you'll find. And I think that makes a difference. When we first opened up, people were kind of scratching their heads, what are these guys doing? Today, we get more resumes into our Colorado office than our next six offices combined. It really has set us apart and is something that's quite unique. And it's also directly in line with what we've been talking about. It's different from Wall Street. It creates an environment for us where we can be independent thinkers. And that really works.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Culture that we came from, we talked a little bit about being in Zug. One of our founders grabbed me one time and said, hey, why don't you figure out where you want to live your life? And see if people want to move there also, right? And follow you. And did you have any prior”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depending on the weather and the traffic, it can be a bit. But let me tell you something. When we first decided to move to Colorado, it was in a way a part of this whole move away from Wall Street, create an environment that's somewhat similar to the Zug.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And by the way, Barry, when you walk through the door, it's immediately apparent to you because when you walk through that office in Colorado, it is brick, steel, stone. We have built a more industrial business building feel that is in direct contrast to what you see in most places within our industry.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Senior Vice President. We've changed. That's, again, a reference to kind of Wall Street culture. That made sense maybe years ago when you had to sound important on the phone. But in today's environment, we don't think it makes a lot of sense. And so the culture that we're creating is a more industrial culture focused on rolling up your sleeves and building businesses. And that's reflective of we think the environment moving forward.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. Our business is no longer about doing deals and providing access, it's about building businesses. And so we don't want to put too much emphasis on the transactional side of things. We think that's been overdone historically. We really want to emphasize the rolling up your sleeves, strategy setting, building businesses side of things. And because of that, we've asked our people.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The company It fits into context. It's because the things that made people successful, that deal doing mindset is not the things that are going to make us successful in the future.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make a good living doing that. And that this transactional skill set is something that was praised. You'll hear teams call themselves deal teams. You'll call individuals call themselves deal professionals. And this deal side of the business is really what was emphasized.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, let me put into context some of our views with regards to how our industry is evolving, and that'll help to inform some of the decisions that we've made with regards to how to set our company culture. The private markets is not a young industry necessarily. We've been around for 40 years, but the skills, the talents, the attributes that allowed people to be successful in this industry historically are not necessarily the attributes that are going to be successful in propelling firms in the future. If you think about the way private markets functioned 20 years ago, 25 years ago, people would with a transactional skill set provide access into an inefficient asset class. They would do that by buying and selling things. And they were able to”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very, very seriously, and that's the culture that we're creating is to take those board assignments very seriously. Yes, there is a lot of steering of individual strategy that goes on in the portfolio companies. At the same time, partners group is developing a business system that we are looking to apply across our portfolio companies. We're looking to create a culture that is similar with regards to how we set strategy, with regards to how we create accountability on that strategy, with regards to how our boards get involved in driving that strategy. And that's something that we think is essential to differentiation in the future.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you think about the role that we play as owners, it is a real responsibility that we have to develop these companies over time. The role of the board years ago maybe wasn't that critical or wasn't that important. Today it is absolutely paramount to your success as an investor. And so we are very, very focused on making our boards the center of vision and strategy and accountability. Our board members work more intensively with our companies, have a greater time commitment than most board members are used to. This has not come together once a quarter, eat chicken dinner and rubber stamp a couple of things, but this is really roll up your sleeves and have a commitment to helping to chart the appropriate path moving forward. And I have always taken that stewardship.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so if you look at our business, we have about 1,800 people at the management company and then across our portfolio over 200,000 employees of our various portfolio companies. So we are a large owner of assets and I think we take that stewardship very, very seriously. That's one of the reasons why we really haven't identified ourselves as a financial firm or as a money management firm. That's not the proper lens through which to view partners group. I think we are very much an owner of assets. We're a builder of businesses and we're a steward of these companies and we take that very seriously. So I wouldn't be surprised in the future if you didn't look at us and we looked more like an industrial conglomerate. That's where I was going to go than like a A private equity fir”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we manage a portfolio of several dozen companies. When you add together all of our portfolio companies, it's effectively $100 billion enterprise when you add all of our companies together across multiple sectors and it's global in terms of its breadth and scope.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say that this has evolved over the last decades. So it used to be within private markets that you would find a good business, apply quite a bit of leverage to it, at least in the private equity business, and be able to make a pretty good return by buying good, solid businesses as they are. That has changed. Leverage levels have come down materially. You're investing majority equity in most of the transactions that are occurring today. And it's all about the future. It's all about what this company's prospects are. How are you going to steer this company to be able to maintain its market position? What can we do with this business over the coming years? So it's much more about potential and how you can drive market leading strategies than it is necessarily about just buying a good business and leveraging it up.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's where private markets, I think, can take a long term perspective and continue to find opportunities when others aren't looking.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we have a global relative value approach to investing, which means that our firm will hold up an investment opportunity from the US alongside opportunities from Europe, alongside opportunities from Asia, and we will fight about where we see the best relative value. And as indicated by the mix that I just described, we have found better relative value in the U.S. markets, not just about activity, but it's about relative value. Now, we have still been active in Europe. We're actually bringing all of our investors to Vienna in just a couple of months, our biggest investors for an investor conference. And I want to bring them to the most European of cities to send a reminder that even though there's a lot of people that are down on Europe at the moment, that's when a long-term investment.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are a global firm. Our teams, many of our teams are organized on a global basis. We have most of our clients from Europe. That's our biggest market and most of our investment activity is in the Americas. It's been about 55% of our investments that we've made are in the US. And that is an evolution. It hasn't always been the case. A lot of people think of us as disproportionately European or Swiss, and they're surprised to learn that over the last decade we have invested most of our firm's capital into the US market. This is a big market, important market.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the postcard setting there in Zug, very charming. But you're on your own a little bit as it relates to your ability to plug into the broader financial community, right? So every client that we have, every asset that we own is a result of somebody getting on an airplane and building a relationship. It's created a culture being there where we don't expect anything to come to us. We are an outbound driven firm, right? We're a firm that identifies opportunity and we hustle and get in front of it. And so, yes, beautiful setting there in the Alps. Yes, that did inform our choice with regards to location being in the mountains was important to us. We wanted to have that continuity of culture, if that makes sense.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's not like that. But it actually had nothing to do, I don't think, with the origins. It was all about this is where he wanted to live his life and his founders agreed. And what that meant is that everybody that joined Partners Group at that time. Wasn't just a butt in a seat in a capital market changing jobs, they were moving their family somewhere and becoming a part of something. And that has created this very tight culture within our organization. We said, let's do the same thing in the Americas. Let's find a place where our people genuinely want to live their life and raise their babies and make that the center of our system. We decided to do that in Colorado.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a baptism by fire in a very entrepreneurial culture. And that very much aligned with who I was and what I was interested in. You gained a lot of experience fast. And so from there, I went to New York, helped to build up the firm's business in the Americas. We were really transitioning from”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so when I started After a couple of days, my wife asked me, How do you like your boss? And I told her, look, I don't know how to answer that question. I have 12 people that tell me what to do. Boss is. I was just the youngest. I think it was the youngest person that they'd ever hired up until that point. And so I was just kind of sweeping up and doing whatever needed to be done. And it was so much fun working with different people in different groups. And I got a lot of good experience doing that. So, you know, when the firm launched its debt business, I was the analyst putting together some of the credit analysis on the first couple of loans that we had written at the time. We had a group that was doing small growth capital investments in Germany and Switzerland at the time. Fun doing secondaries and funds. And the senior people were more specialized. But as young people, we're just getting a very dynamic set of experience.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody there speaks English. I was in an English speaking environment from sun up to sundown. It was very dynamic. My wife actually picked up more German than I did because she was out in the community. But in our context, we had an English-speaking environment in the office.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I took some German lessons before I Went there, and then I found out the Swiss German is a little different, and I didn't end up very different, isn't it? It's a little different. It's a little different.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Philosophy at the time. It was Switzerland was the center of gravity. That's where the cultural ethos was kind of formed and Zug Switzerland. And in that environment, through proximity to the firm's founders, people kind of get culturally integrated. And then you went to different offices from there.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where you began? I joined as an analyst. I got an offer to Partners Groups New York office, and that's where I thought I was going. And then I got a call not that long before I was supposed to start. By one of the partners there who said, Wait a second, Dave, you're not going to New York. He said, you're coming to Switzerland for like a year, maybe three years until I tell you you're ready to go to New York. Wow. He said, how can you go join us in that market before you know anything about us? How can you represent us in that market before you know anything about us? That must have been an exciting ride out of College, right? So it was, I hook up the phone and had an interesting conversation with my wife about going to Switzerland. But that was the firm's...”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I found partners group out of school. I was actually running the investment banking club at BYU. You know, thought I was interested in that interested in going to Wall Street. I was tentatively committed to go to Lehman Brothers. And there was one of the partners group founders. It was on campus. And I went to convince him why he should come and be a part of what was called the investment banking boot camp that we were doing at the time to get students ready to go to Wall Street and do their interviews, et cetera. And I went to pitch this asset management guy on why he should come be a part of that process. Uh-oh. He jujitsu. And he jujitsued me and he ended up, we ended up talking. And he was just this fascinating, bigger than life personality. And we ended up hitting it off. And I got linked up with Partners Group directly out of school.”
2023-02-24 · Masters in Business · David Layton on Being an Outbound Global Driven Firm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source