YouSaid · the spoken record

Frank Brosens

lines on the record: 63
first: 2022-11-21
most recent: 2022-11-21
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

“We looked a few years later for an additional junior person and found Tom Steyer, who joined us in'8y four. I joined in early'81. He joined about three and change years later. We hired another junior trader when David Silfan went off to the block desk by the name of Danny Ok, and then over time we added research people, Amy Stevens left the area when I started running it looked to hire a number two and found a guy coming out of Harvard undergrad by the name of Eric Mindich. That was late 88. And we brought in people over time. Eddie Lampert joined in early 87. Dinaker Singh joined in 89 or 90. Renan August around 9192. A lot of people that ended up in a variety of fairly important roles within the industry.”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a good question. There were at the time, I think, less than 50 partners, not an enormous amount of capital. I think we had a couple hundred million dollars worth of risk at the time when we started. It grew so that by the time I started running the area in early 87, we were running close to a billion dollars worth of capital. It was still a significant portion of the risk-taking that we did at the firm. I can't remember when the private equity business started at Goldman, but it was right around that time, the mid-80s. The real estate area was a couple of years later than that. So again, even as it grew, the lion's share of the risk was taken within the risk-arb area. Jay Aaron started to grow and grow its currency risk so that by the late 80s, early 90s, it was dominant in terms of the amount of risk that got taken at the firm, but that wasn't the case in the early years.”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was small at the time we had Bob Rubin, another partner there, Bob Freeman, Amy Stevens, and I on the research side, on the trading side, David Silfan, who over time became the head of the trading desk there, an older trader by the name of Bruce Mayers, who since passed away, and then a junior trader by the name of Richard Perry. All the decisions got made on the research side, it was pretty intense in that most of the risk at the time at Goldman Sachs was taken in the arbitrage area. There was very little risk being taken elsewhere in the firm. Jern had not yet been bought. They really didn't take an awful lot of risk in the fixed income side. The lion's share of the risk actually was in risk garb. It was viewed as the single area where they took risk with partner capital.”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he looked at me like I had two heads and just nodded and said, okay, I'm not the smartest answer in the world. He's frequently reminded me of that answer whenever he thinks I'm being slightly overconfident in my assessment of probabilities. He reminds me of that 99% odds. I think it took me about three months before they asked me if I did want to stay. And I immediately said yes and put business school off.”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chance that you would not go back to business school and just stay and being the mature, thoughtful person that I was, I said, well, actually, I have to tell you 99% chance I'm going back to business school.”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, it was six months before it was a two-year program. I'd spent a little bit of time in the merger ARB area because what we would typically do on the banking side is we'd go down and talk to them about how to value different securities. And of all the areas that Goldman that I was exposed to, I found that area to be incredibly interesting. So I asked Jeff Boise at the time whether it was even a possibility to spend the last six months of my two-year analyst program in another area. And he said, I think I know you well enough to know that you've got an area in mind. And I said, yeah, I do. It's the Riskarb area. And he said, well, let me call Bob Rubin. I think they coincidentally happen to be looking for someone. So I went down there and spoke to Bob. He asked me at the time if we like you and you like it here. Do you think there's any...”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“said Who else do you think might be a buyer? And I went right with my second name with a little more confidence and he said, that's the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Why would you think that? And of course I didn't know why I thought it. It was just because I'd had the conversation with Chris and he told me it was a reasonable idea and I didn't think that throwing him under the bus was the appropriate thing at the time. And so I just turned red faced and said nothing.”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He would make sport of embarrassing them in front of everybody. Chris Flowers was there with me. The first meeting I went to, I spent a lot of time with Chris going through who would potentially buy this unit that they were discussing at the time, what the valuations were, went through the whole thing with him. He'd been there about four months. It had the experience and knew how to deal with it. And I came up with half a dozen buyers that I thought were reasonable based on my conversations with Chris. Of course, being the youngest guy there, Peter Sachs picks on me first and says, who do you think would be a buyer for this? I very tentatively threw out the first name. And he said, that's actually a pretty good idea. Oh my God, this is going to be a lot easier than I thought.”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Went into the merger and acquisition area. That's where I started. I spent about a year and a half there. It was phenomenal training because I knew virtually nothing about business at the time. I think was at the time nine or ten people, the whole group. And as analysts, you would come into a meeting of the group and have to come up with a buyer list and valuation metrics for some entity that they've just been hired to sell. They always picked on the analysts first, then went up the curve. And the person that did the questioning was Peter Sachs, who at the time was just a vice president, but he terrorized the analysts.”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not at all. It was viewed as kind of a middling firm at the time. The big firms at the time were first Boston, Morgan Stanley. The banks really weren't players in the space. JP Morgan wasn't really considered a competitor. There were other smaller firms, Bear Stearns, et cetera. But Goldman Sachs was viewed as just another firm, really”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was a mechanical and aerospace engineer at Princeton and was looking to get into business in some fashion. And I applied to business school, Harvard Business School. They accepted me, which was unusual coming out of college at the time, but they accepted me with a two-year deferred admit. So I was trying to figure out what to do for two years, applied to a few places, got accepted to a number of engineering. One was Hewlett-Packard, et cetera. But I heard about these two-year investment programs that were starting in New York and decided to apply for them because the one thing I knew for sure coming out of Princeton was I wasn't going to be in finance and I definitely wasn't going to live in New York. I got turned down by 14 or 15 places before Goldman Sachs hired me. They happened to have somebody looking that”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our conversation covers Frank's path to Goldman's wrist garb desk, the culture that made it a success, and his eventual decision to leave the firm. We then discussed the founding of Taconic, its partnership and investment philosophy, and its approach to risk management, capital allocation, and the pursuit of opportunities. Along the way, Frank highlights examples that demonstrate the benefits of a carefully aligned culture for teammates and clients across organizational structure, portfolio management, and compensation. Before we get going, the holidays are fast approaching, and just like learning from investment grades, we've got you covered. It just so happens that my wife works with one of the best custom jewelers in the country. They've sold jewelry to kings, queens, presidents, first ladies, and lots of regular folks like us too. For the ESG conscious, they only sell lab diamonds alongside a line of incredible”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My guest on today's show is Frank Brogens, the co founder of Taconic Capital, an $8 billion event-driven multistrategy hedge fund founded in 1999. Frank started his career at Goldman Sachs, where he joined and later ran Bob Rubin's legendary risk arbitrage desk. That group became one of the top breeding grounds for hedge fund founders, including among its ranks Tom Steyer at Farallon, Richard Perry at Perry Partners, Danny Ock at Oxif Capital Management, Eddie Lampert at ESL, Eric Mindich at Eden Park, and Dinegar Singh at TPG Axon.”
2022-11-21 · Capital Allocators · Frank Brosens – Culture and Partnership at Taconic Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.282) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source