YouSaid · the spoken record

Greg Fleming

lines on the record: 86
first: 2020-03-16
most recent: 2020-03-16
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'll come back to what I was saying to you in the maritime because it really was the sale of Maryland to the Bank of America when this was most dramatically illustrated for me. When I was doing the negotiation with Bank of America on what price and trying to get the company sold because the next day we could have been in trouble and all the risks that were embedded in that, it was me. I was there. It wasn't okay to say, why isn't somebody else here? This is a massive decision. And if I get this wrong, 65,000 people could be out of work. So life lesson is somebody is going to be the one to decide. Why not you? Be ready for it. Don't look around all the time as you start to move through your career for somebody else who's going to do it. They may not be there”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People say, well, you get up early, it's the pressure of the job. The generations have laid the groundwork. This really isn't that hard. All the things that I get to do and that my kids are going to have access to, what about, look at those grandparents and my great-grandmother who was so tough and lived to 99. So tenacity as you see it in the people before you. And my parents' 60th wedding anniversaries today.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I always think about this in the context of generations because my grandfathers, my father's father, died when he was two in 1935. And he graduated from the second grade and went to work in Maine as a woodsman. Not an easy life and it ended early, but he was clearly a very bright guy. My mother's father graduated from the eighth grade. They lived in Brooklyn, and he worked in a manual labor job for newspapers in New York and would walk to, I think it was the Daily News every day for night shift a lot. And even when neighborhoods became a little rougher, he still said, I'm going to walk. My great-grandmother who lived in 99 on my mother's side had a fruit stand outside Borough Hall in Brooklyn. And my oldest daughter is working for the Brooklyn DA now. She's graduated from college. Outside, you know, right there at Burrow Hall. So I sometimes say this, you know.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are lots of things I could do better, and I try to focus on actually changing. It's not, okay, I always did it this way. And if it's not really working, think about it and change it and get better. And maybe I can keep doing that until I'm 70, 80, 90, and I can address things that I shouldn't have been carrying along the way these years.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You might have seen this piece. John Gardner was a Stanford graduate in a 1991 commencement speech. He talked about self-renewal, and then he gave that speech in different places, and it's everywhere now. I hadn't seen it until recently. But one of the things that really resonated with me because I'm 56 years old, is that self-growth and self-renewal should be a lifelong thing. And what Gardner talked about is being in a room and seeing these executives who thought that they were going to get to the pinnacle and now they're there at 40, 50, 60, and they seem jaded and struggling with life. And some people keep renewing themselves and taking on different challenges. You can see this, whatever one wants to think about different candidates. There are a lot of candidates for president that are doing it on the late side from a chronological standpoint. So the self-renewal, self-reinvention,”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm up by five, sometimes earlier, rarely later, even on the weekends I like to get up early. Then I might take it a little slower and have coffee with the dogs. And then I bring a very organized approach to my professional life. So I don't forget that lesson that I learned even though I didn't completely absorb it in the Booz Allen days. What are the things that are really important that I as the leader have to get done to move this forward? And what are the things that I've got great people doing? And I don't need to get involved in that. So I structure my time efficiently, but every day I'm trying to think about what really matters and what doesn't so that I use the day really well.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Technology changes every job every day. It matters so much less where people are and certainly service businesses, it will be very important part of wealth management services and even services with institutional clients. I think social media and the way that you're dealing and talking to clients is going to become more and more a part of our business. And regulators will be trying to figure out how and in what ways they allow it to happen because it's just the momentum behind it is huge.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think technology is changing the world at a pace that's incredible. The number of years between an invention being really put out there. Using it. So electricity, when you started putting light in houses, it was about 60, 65 years before half of the country had that. For radio, it was 35 years, television 25. For the iPhone, it was four. Comes out in 07, and by 2011, half the country's got an iPhone. And now probably everybody. And the debate with parents is do they get it at 3, 5, 7, 9, whatever. So I think technology is going to continue to change all industries at an increasing rate. I think one of the reasons we've had such a long economic run here is because everybody struggles to measure productivity.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I use LinkedIn and my marketing colleagues helped me with that away from that I'm not on my front foot on social media from a professional standpoint and frankly relatedly personally I don't do that much on social media I do have an Instagram account so I can see the pictures that my kids post but I've never posted a picture”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investment world's easy. The pet peeve is easy. You get hired for something, you should stick to it. Mandate creep is something that that's not the job. So if it's small cap, it's small cap.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This isn't a life changing pet peeve, but my kids and I joke about it when you have a down escalator and people are standing there and blocking the way and nobody walks. I'll say, why are we all standing here? We can go with the escalator, but it can go a little faster. Let's walk.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was. I haven't done it in a couple years now, but I ran New York a bunch of times. I ran Boston lunch, which was fun but challenging. And I liked the marathon running. And I liked the training for it, the time by yourself, early mornings. You know, New York, it's in November, so August, the sun's coming up at 4.30 and you're out trying to run 15 miles. I like that a lot.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd highlight two. One is I run a lot, although I've started to temper that with cycling, which I love, but I do a lot of that. And then I love to read.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Club from the ground up, trying to put in place a group of people who feel like I described at Rockefeller getting off the elevator, a sense of pride of working for the Miami Marlins, a culture similar to the culture here, with Derek motivates positively, but he sets the bar high. He believes in excellence. This is an intensely competitive person. It looks forward to the day when the club thrives, and if we can get the club to the level where they win major things, he'll take tremendous pride in that. He works very hard behind this. So we've gone from the 29th ranked farm system to top handful now over the first couple years. The culture and the way the club and the people feel inside the stadium is night and day. And we're optimistic about where we can take it under Derek's leadership.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Effort to put a group together to buy the Marlins. And the vision always of the group was that Derek was going to run it once we put the group together. And we ended up with a great ownership group, with Derek as the CEO of the Miami Marlins, running all aspects of the club. And that was something that Derek was very focused on, and it goes back to leadership, and he has very similar views to mine on the leadership side. We have a fair amount of symmetry on that as well, including in his office he has the Mandela quote. It always seems impossible until it is done. So he wanted to lead the organization. He didn't want to have the baseball side. He wanted to lead the organization, and he does. He's the CEO of the entire club. And we have a great ownership group, Bruce Sherman is the control person and the lead on the ownership side, but there's a number of other really good people that are in the mix and very supportive of Derek. It's our third season, and we lost a lot of games last year, but he and his team are fixing the...”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, right from the start, even before he was the Derrick Jeter who gets into the Hall of Fame with all but one vote, he was already trying to give back. So I'd gotten to know his family and they'd gotten to know me and there really was a comfort level all the way around. We had done some fun things at Morgan Sanley. He went to an Alabama football game. And you went around with Derek in any situation that was in the public eye. He was as patient and graceful with the request for photos and can we have a picture, the impatience he never showed it. And it's relentless. I mean, he's recognizable, particularly in New York, but anywhere. So I got to know the man. He got to know me and we became friends. So we started looking at different options for teams to buy. Derek had some very clear ideas on which part of the country he wanted to be in. And at some point the Miami franchise was on the market. And we spent a lot of time talking about getting to know somebody six, seven, eight months.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we started to become friends and talk on a more regular basis outside of just the things in and around Morgan Stanley. And when I left Morgan Stanley in early 2016, Derek was at a point where what he really wanted next was to be an owner. And he was clear that that was on his critical path for post his playing career. So I helped him with that. We started looking at ways of doing that. Over the course of all of this, I had gotten to know Derek's family. He'd gotten to know mine. This is important for Derek and for me. But his parents really are very close to him. You know, I met them and I met his sister Charlie who runs the Turn 2 Foundation forum does a fantastic job. I do sit on the advisory board there and I've tried to be as helpful as I can in a great charity. And by the way, something about Derek Jeter, he started that in his second year in the league.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because that's where Derek is, and that's where my loyalties have gone. I got to know Derek early on in the Morgan Stanley time, so I've known him about 10 years now. We ended up doing a whole bunch of interviews in front of different groups at Morgan Stanley, Private Wealth Advisors and clients, and we became friends through that. And as you're interviewing somebody, you get to know them, you know this better than anybody. You really do get to start to know the person that you're talking with.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm happy to do that, Ted. He's a fantastic guy as good as he appears to the outside world. That's the actual man. And you've been a lifelong Yankee fan as have I, but I'm going to try to make you a Marlins fan now.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to bring that humanity, that dialogue, though, and never forget. Even at Merrill I had there were 65,000 people when I was present and then there were 35,000 in the two businesses at Morgan Stanley. If it becomes numbers and people don't matter, then you've lost the ability to lead. You really don't have the mandate in the eyes of the people that you're trying to lead. So being willing to be direct in the feedback, being willing to course correct, and doing it with humanity and with a recognition that the person sitting in front of you, this is a huge part of their day life, they will go home and talk to somebody and say, you know, I'm no longer here or this happened and recognize how that must feel. If you do that, then people do want to follow you. People know I'm driven and I want to succeed. And we talk about excellence here. But they also know they can trust the way that I'm going to do it and that we're going to try to win for everybody and when it doesn't work, they're always going to.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“evaluation of where are we, are we on course, how should we course correct a little, maybe sometimes a lot. You have to be willing to do that. When it involves human beings, you have to be willing to do that with. Hopefully for the good, even if they leave the firm, and I have people that I've asked to leave different organizations that I've been a leader in who are friends today, who I helped get the next job, who got in a better spot, and who agree that was a good time to transition”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the under talked about elements of a great leader is the willingness to shift and to adapt and to move. Now as a leader, you've got to be careful. You can't be hercy jerky, and you have to have a clear sense of this is where we're trying to take Rockefeller Capital Management. These are the strategic priorities. You have to say it again and again. Here's how we're going to get there. But you also have to take feedback from people and look at situations and be willing to adapt and adjust. And some people don't want to do that after they've been leading for a long time. They start to think, well, I'm always right or, you know, I know where I'm going here. I try to tweak things and I listen to the feedback from my team. And at this point in my career, I'm willing to hear that this isn't working even though I thought I had it right. We're going to try this. We're going to put this person in charge and move this person over here. Maybe somebody has to go. And that constant real...”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's got to be with direct feedback and straight talk and saying to people, and I've had to do this over the course of my career more times than I'd like, where you sit down with somebody and you say, you know, we've tried to have this work and you've been working hard and focusing on these things, but there's really a disconnect here and there's a better spot for your talents and services than here. That conversation sometimes has to occur. Or you have to shift and move somebody and say, this isn't working. We're going to try this.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or I can't wait to get out of here. People who have that reaction in an organization that doesn't provide positive motivating leadership, the organization of the enterprise won't thrive as much as it should. And you see that Ted throughout society today. Governments, academic institutions, companies, some do better than others based upon the quality of the leadership at the top. And are the people who are leading, making the people who need to get it done feel good about getting it done every day? And it can be exhausting because you're worried about and you have to focus on others, which is why the individual successful producer, whether it's an investment banker or a portfolio manager, is often not the person that you want to put in a leadership position and say, worry about others. Motivate everybody. Make sure that the good people really are driving forward. Make sure the person who feels like they're not in the right spot either gets in the right spot, or maybe they should be in a different organization, but handling it in the right way.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The challenge that you're creating as we're trying to lead this group, because we were kind of co-heads, the good person goes into your office and then they come out and they feel beaten down. And is there a hope here? We can't be here just for the superstars. We have to take people who are very good or good and make them feel great and make them feel the sense of purpose. Otherwise, the collective good isn't going to move forward. So a lot of it is about positive motivation and having people feel stimulated when they get off the elevator. I said this recently in a town hall I did here at Rockefeller. I said we're trying to create a culture and when you get off that elevator you feel great about what you're going to go do that day. You feel happy to be here and you understand your purpose and you want to help push this forward and do the right thing by clients and you like the people you collaborate with and you walk down the hallway and somebody says good morning. You don't get off that elevator, go through the doors and say, when is it going to be five o'clock or six o'clock?”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great follow on because I believe this and not everybody practices it, but Erna Shackleton had a great quote and he did an amazing job keeping his men alive. Remember, he was the one going to the South Pole and the ship got stuck in the ice and he got them all out of there. And he said, optimism is true moral courage. And if you're going to lead these people, I believe in positive motivation and positive stimulation. So when I first started really acting in a leadership role at Merrill, it was leading investment bankers. I pretty quickly figured out that positive motivation and trying to get people to stretch in a constructive way was the best way to extend the enterprise. And I remember talking to one of the people who worked with me in a leadership who was more of a quote producer, a good banker, and less focused on positive motivation and would listen to the Shackleton quote and probably want to debate it. And I said,”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In you and all sorts of various things, get them in place and let them go do it. 15, 20 years on, I was right about that. And I have so many people around me at Rockefeller, and I have throughout my career who are better in lots of different things than I am. And having them feel like they're part of something and we're partners and they have their piece to go drive forward. And I'm not going to second guess them. We've agreed on strategy. We've agreed on milestones. We've agreed on pace. And then it's over to them. You know, there was this great Jeopardy player recently who bet a significant amounts in the Daily Doubles, James Holzauer, and he would push his hands out and say everything in. I do that on leadership. I make sure I get great people. I try to position them well. We agree on the things I just described, strategy, pace, et cetera. And then it's over to them. You have to go get it done, and great people then flourish. So one of the real tricks of leadership is finding great people”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leadership is a critical part of what I've been able to accomplish with my career. I enjoy motivating and leading people to a goal. And the most important part of leadership is hiring the best possible people and team and then empowering them to go do it. If people are really talented, they want to be able to take something and run with it. So one of the things that I've been focused on throughout my career, and I did early on, even when I was younger and I was in a leadership position and I had people working for me who might have been older or more experienced, the trick was to get them in a great spot, make them feel a sense of empowerment and an ability to go get it done, and then let them do it, and great people will flourish when they do that. I used to say in the Merrill days that the trick on leadership was to find people that were more talented.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sound bite on a Friday evening on what would you want to hear somebody say about the firm, we want to be the premier independent financial advisory firm in the industry, serving through the Global Family Office and Strategic Advisory, Heinetworth, an Ultra High Net Worth, clients and families, and on the Rockefeller Asset Management side, institutional investors, pension and downtown Foundation, we'd like to be considered best in class on those clients for those things”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“through their private vehicle, and they've been great partners. They and I talked about doing something like this virtually from the first month or two I left Morgan Stanley. They understand where we're going. They're involved in strategy. They leave a lot of the day-to-day execution to us. That's their model. Our view is that we just need to execute. We've got a best-in-class brand. We've got great people. We have great capital partner, great board. Some of these board members, I'm sure you know, Jack Brennan is our lead director, Andrea Jung, Shelly Lazarus, Arnie Mannion, Paul Miners. So every day the leadership team and I think we just need to keep going forward. It's the ingredients are there. It's the quality of the execution that's going to drive a lot of this.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the challenges was buying was effectively a family office and transitioning that to really a growth company. And you have the people that are here when we bought the company and then you're hiring a lot of people and you want everybody to feel like they're part of it. So we've worked hard on that and getting everybody feeling like they're connected to the culture. They know what the culture is. We care a lot about our website and what the website says, the mission statement of the firm, the principals. One of our principles is excellence. I've been on that my whole life. One of my favorite quotations, Vincent Lombardi, who said perfection is not attainable, but if we chase it, we might just catch excellence. You got to get everybody to buy into that. So if somebody was at a firm that was maybe a different place before, that's really good. We want them to feel like they're part of that. We've worked hard on that in the first two years. So that was one of the early challenges. Another positive that I want to mention is our private equity partner is Viking.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“important in their additive, and you can say to the client this team will have access to a broader cross section of things they can help you with here than they did even at the big firm because the big firm isn't trying to provide a broad cross-section of services to these clients.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This team is going to thrive here. They're going to be able to do what they do really well for you. You know, we still have regulators. We have to make sure we do the right things by, and there are rules here. But it's a more entrepreneurial culture and place for them. And they thrive here. So that's a big part of it. And then you add on what you were describing. This business started with investment. We're adding a lot of other things to investment. Those family office services, the trust companies, the generational planning. I was on the phone yesterday with a client that's done a lot of philanthropy, but they want us to help them with a more systematic approach to it. We have a sister organization called Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisory. It's a not-for-profit. They're experts in big foundations, and they do a lot of tailored planning. If you really want to set up a foundation focused on climate change, these are the things we'd recommend. So we bring them in to talk to clients. So those things are all also in...”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that matters a lot, which makes the client feel comfortable, is the environment we're creating here for the private wealth advisors to thrive within. Because the reason that so many people want to come work here and that we are hiring some of these great teams, not some, really been very fortunate to bring in best-in-class teams across the country is because we've set up a model that allows them to do what they do best for those clients easier day in and day out. It's not a big firm with a lot of bureaucracy and questions around, well, why are you doing this? And sorry, you can't do this for your client because we would have to do it for 4 million other clients and we can't allow that for 4 million clients. We're never going to have 4 million clients here. Our clients are all in this segment, high net worth and ultra high net worth. So I'd say to the clients,”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're very focused on a bespoke model here. We want these high-end individuals and families or the institutional investors in Rockefeller Asset Management to feel a different sense of connectivity with us. And this gets to the trusted advisor. From an operating and financial standpoint, you can't customize everything. So we do need to find ways of doing things in an efficient manner with some degree of standardization and technology allows us to do that more and more. But we're okay with a lot of customization because if you're managing 50 or 100 or 500 or billion dollars for a family, they're expecting that they're treated really on a one-off basis. And we need to deliver that. And if we want to be the firm that differentiates that coverage model, we have to deliver on that.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We typically will onboard the portfolio as it existed unless there's something that we really don't like. And then we dig in on the diligence going forward. And if there's a manager that we're less comfortable with, we say you're not going to continue to use that manager going forward. The client that's happy with it now can stay with it. But we try to balance that between being dictatorial as they come over. But we need to be clear this is the set of managers we're comfortable with on a long-term basis. We invest a lot in this manager selection. It's a very key part of the investment side of our family office.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The business that we've grown the most since we bought the firm is more external because that's the model they're used to. So if we hire a team from Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley, UBS, JP Morgan, they're used to more of an external manager model. Legacy Family Office was more connected to Rockefeller Asset Management, which was good for them because the performance has been very good over many years. So we're opening that up more for them, and we're exposing the clients that have come over with our new teams to Rockefeller Asset Management. So we're making it more of a blend on both sides.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, long only fundamental research, bottom up, strategies are here, the teams have been here for a long time. We also have serving the family office a manager selection platform with many high quality firms outside of Rockefeller. Because in the final analysis, or not in the final, in the first instance for our high net worth and ultra high net worth clients, it's open architecture. We're only trying to do the right thing by them. We'll access the Rockefeller Asset Management products if we think it's right for the client, but there's never anything beyond that. We want to make sure that the client knows we're completely open architecture.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We think that this is a time when the US is going to follow. It's not always the case when you're looking at whether it's investing or lots of other things in life, but it's so compelling in Europe and so important. And now being talked about everywhere in the political realm and that the desire to invest consistent with ESG principles will accelerate significantly here in the institutional space and over time on the individual side as well.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a blend. It might have been before it was the classic financial analysis balance sheet income statement, quality management, things like that. And now we're adding this to the mix. So it may be that if they're improving and the trajectory is pretty good, but not great, but the other characteristics are compelling, it is still an alpha generation strategy. So you're trying to balance all of the variables, issues, and important variable for us, but it's in the mix against the others as well.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the big things we've learned is this notion of improvers versus leaders. It's important if you're a leader in the ESG space because that really can indicate a healthier company on a lot of basis. But we don't want to limit it to that. We're not trying to exclude companies. We're trying to identify companies that are going to improve in the ESG space as well. So we're looking for predictive variables around who's improving an ESG because we think that's an early alpha signal. We've incorporated this notion of improvers into a lot of the work we're doing in ESG.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of detailed fundamental research company by company. And in fact, we do a fair amount of engagement with companies as well. So Amazon's a good example. We've been working with them on their environmental footprint. We just had some clients and prospects on a visit that they set up, and we talked to them regularly at Amazon in Spain looking at some of their fulfillment plants and how they do things. And the reason we do that is because we want to work with companies to help them get on a better track, identify companies that we want to invest in because they're trying to do the right things and we think they're making progress. And also we're showing our clients and prospects we're at the heart of the intellectual capital around investing in ESG and where the industry is going.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the kinds of investing that we've been doing for decades, we're now adding in a comprehensive look at ESG today and ESG trend line going forward to decide which companies we think will outperform, because in the final analysis, in all of our ESG strategies, the goal is alpha creation in addition to the mandate.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We actually have a pretty comprehensive framework across different industries of materiality factors that we're looking at to differentiate who's doing well today from an ESG standpoint. And then as importantly, who we think is improving and going to do well going forward. So we call this materiality mapping, and it's industry by industry and the set of factors is tailored to different industries. And it really cuts across the SSG space. So it can be everything from labor relations and employee turnover to environmental footprint, the impact of climate change on that footprint, maybe the impact of climate change on whether they're going to adapt their business model to changing technology and preferences around that. So there's a broad cross-section of material factors. And it comes down to when you're evaluating whether you invest in a company or not, historically it was more balance sheet income statement.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Myself a bit of an expert on millennials in Generation Z for only one reason. I have three in and around my house all the time and they have their friends from college. Those generations are not going to let go of this. This is really coming in a big way. So we're starting to see that we have a next-gen advisory council here with some of the younger Rockefellers and other clients who get together quarterly and they talk about topics that are important to them and then they tell us this is what Rockefeller Capital Management should be thinking about across all of its three businesses that we are interested in and people like us will be interested in. So the ESG is a thread across the whole firm is something that we're really pursuing.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the institutional side, they're stepping it up a lot. Now, you're as close to that as anybody. You're wired in this and the people you talk to. So it's coming quickly on the institutional side. In Europe, there's tremendous momentum, but we're seeing it start to come here. So there we're just responding and dealing with the classic institutional sales process. And our clients there are asking for it. And we've actually continued to progress how we do it and how we think about it. We're focused on ESG improvers as opposed to just ESG leaders because we think if a company is making a lot of progress on ESG metrics that we look at, that is often a leading indicator for alpha creation going forward. You're getting them early on metrics that matter now. On the family office side and on the individual side, it tends to come down to family still, although it's becoming a bit of a groundswell as the younger generation comes up. So, you know, I say, I fancy.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Full stop. So now there's a tremendous focus on ESG and climate change, and I'm happy about that as a human being, if not even as a competitor. But for us, it's in the DNA here. We had it. So that focus on intellectual capital and leading ideas is how we offset the scale that we're obviously not going to have in Rockefeller asset management.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fun in the seventies, literally, with family money that was here. We have a 27-year track record in ESG investing here. We kicked off eight years ago a climate solutions fund, which is a pure play vehicle focused only on climate and companies that are focused on climate remediation, small and mid-cap. So a lot of people are running around on that now, but ours has an eight-year track record. The focus on ESG as a differentiator is the type of thing we try to do in Rockefeller asset management. We're trying to be thoughtful about getting ahead of where we can find alpha for clients, what fits with our brand, what fits with our history. And this whole ESG thrust that's now everywhere. One of our senior advisors is Laura Tyson, who sat on the board of Morgan Stanley. I've known a long time. And she was at Davos, and she said, Davos was about climate change this year.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The nice thing about it, we call it Rockefeller Asset Management. It has a long history here in the former rock and co and now through Rockefeller Capital Management. So there's a lot of tenure in the investment professional side. It's a lot of bottom-up fundamental research. It's a long-term orientation. So the turnover in the portfolios is lower. We like all that. It fits with the trusted advisor. We're trying to find companies and opportunities to generate alpha through the cycle. We're leaning against momentum trades. All of that comes together in a way that fits with the cultural ethos here and the way we work with clients. We also have tried to take advantage of where we can lead from an intellectual capital standpoint. So we were one of the first in ESG. Now the family helped a lot here because the Rockefeller family cares a lot about the environment, what's happening to it, sustainable investing. The Rockefeller family office had a mission.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're brought into situations like this, and this happens all the time across our families because they already know us and they can trust us on the private wealth side. We're not worried about necessarily an investment banking relationship or fee. We're trying to make sure the right thing happens because we're going to continue to have a relationship with them on a long-term basis. Investment banking typically is more of a one-off and then something might happen several years later. So we really do lead with trusted non-conflicted advice high quality individuals. We're as good as anybody anywhere. And because of the trust and the lack of the conflict bring us in and will really help you. That's the first thing we go with.”
2020-03-16 · Capital Allocators · Greg Fleming – Building and Running Rockefeller Capital Management (Capital Allocators, EP.125) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source