YouSaid · the spoken record

James Clarke

lines on the record: 68
first: 2025-05-15
most recent: 2025-05-15
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 just can't care about the result. I just got to stay in the process, and I look back on that, and I was like, there was so much fun that could have been had I not been wrapped around the axle. Having said that, whenever I played, whether we won or lost, but I remember the people I played with. And I still keep in touch with them. I can't tell you any of the games. I can't tell you what happened. But I can tell you who I played with. And one of the things I want that I think is different in asset management is for us as a group in 20 years to think very fondly of the people that I worked with. That to me would be a nice experience because I don't think everybody has that anywhere they work. They have a real tension about people around them. Their egos clash. This culture that Doug has really been focused on and persevered with, I think we could have that experience. And that I would like to enjoy it and remember the people that I worked with.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not take things so seriously. I turned 50 a couple weeks ago. I did play sports. I did make some pretty good teams along the way just through perseverance. But I would get myself so wound up. One thing I've noticed in America is that you kind of stop playing team sports around high school unless you get into college. You can kind of stop or you play socially in the park. We play competitive sports. I played 26, 27 before I came here. But I would just get so wrapped around the results. And I would really beat myself up about it. I took up golf when I got here and I'm at a point now where there's just this piece. Sometimes it's going to hit the huzzle and go 45 degrees right. Sometimes it's going to go straight and land on the green.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the end zone, four rows back with a couple of high school teachers go to every game. And I think it just becomes a joke fest at this point, laughing at situations. I love the underdog. I like following them. I like the trauma. And I remember there was a game last year where they lost to the Rams and I turned to my friend Tim who teaches out in the Bronx and I said to him one day we will look back on this game when they win the Super Bowl. And he said, no, we won't.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the Mets are 21 and 9 as we speak right now. So I came here in 02. There were a handful of Australians that were here as well. And all of a sudden, they were like Yankees fans as if they'd been around since 1923. And I just thought it was so basic. The Yankees had won in 96, 98, 99. Against them, that's in 2000. Just missed out in 01 with the Diamondbacks. That was such an easy decision. And I've always liked the underdog. They got into the NLCS last year. They've been in a couple of World Series. They've actually been a little bit more successful. The Jets is probably one that I will never get over. I'm a season ticket holder.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you'd showed me a map of America in 1998 and told me to point to the cities, I would have got Detroit mixed up with Idaho or something. I've been to 47 of the states. Out of 50. I didn't grow up. And then I just absolutely fell in love with it. It's a marvelous place. I miss Australia dearly. But I would say being here and also being in finance. So basically everything has turned out differently. There was a period there where I just thought I was going to write scripts for comedians. I did that for a week. They weren't very good. And then I got into this and I've loved it ever since and I just love people. That's really what it boils down to. It's a relationship business.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It to him, and the first thing he saw was the apostrophe. And I learned that from this day. And then Bill Thompson, I admired him from afar. I was a senior associate VP, senior vice president. He was the CEO. He did things the right way. There was a delineation of responsibilities in the organization. He kept people focused on things. I remember him saying, we had a conference. He said to the entire, if I see a flotilla of Mercedes out there, I will be deeply annoyed. You are presenting yourself to the clients in the way that you have to be familiar with them and you have to be relatable to them. I do not want to see that. And he just taught these little lessons that have carried me forever.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My first boss, John Wilson, he's very old school. Back in the 90s, you could be kind of rough on people. He trained me the right way. And I learned quickly. He was maniacally focused on detail. Detail was everything to him. He used to have this philosophy. And this carried with me to this day. If you make a typo and an email or a client's name, how do you expect them to want them to give you money to manage? This was when you could actually go through the airport and into the lounge. He was going from Melbourne to Sydney to Brisbane. The only reason he was going to Sydney was to pick up presentation materials for a final presentation. The Queensland Industry Electrical Employees Retirement System. And I'd put the apostrophe in employees in the wrong spot. And I had gone over this thing so many times.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It probably went around the world 50 times, and it was battered and bruised. I remember being on a trip with Mark Lipschultz in the Middle East. He's like, can I just buy you a new suitcase? That was my first paid job. What I learned from it was ask questions. Don't just stand there. Don't just be a cashier. And I think in this industry, you're either at McDonald's window. There's high demand and you're just standing there and you're just taking fun docs or you're proactively going out there and learning about people. So I got out from behind the counter, got out to the customers, found out what they were doing, qualified what they needed.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I worked in a department store in Sydney and they kept me away from all the sort of fashionable stuff and they put me in the suitcase department. We didn't have cell phones in the mid 90s. So I'm sitting there behind the counter just staring around, doing my four hours and leaving. There was no flow on these suitcases. I learned within a week or two, what do people use a suitcase for? They're going somewhere. By asking those questions, I was able to start to qualify what type of suitcase they needed. If it was a businessman, you need durability. If it's a family going on their first trip, get them a big one. And then I would start to read the brochures where they were made, what they were made of, and was able to talk about the product. When you travel, you get a very fond attachment to your suitcase. It is everywhere with you. I had this to me that I bought, and this thing lasted me 20 years. And I dragged this thing every day.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A gentleman of past, he was 93 years old. He bought this car in Los Angeles. I've got the original receipt. He drove it everywhere. And there's a picture of him the weekend of Woodstock on the Hudson River with it. It has never been painted. It's got chips all over it. It's the original car. And I barely even drive it, Ted. It's four-speed stick shift. And those ones, if you're just a little off on the clutch, man, you are bunny hopping that thing down the road. It's the fascination of Aya Coca. It's the fascination of that car. It's the fascination of that period on the weekends or sometimes just slightly detail it. If you detail it too much, you rip the paint off. What I'm tapping into is nostalgia.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That 68 California special Mustang. I became a casual observer of those and got really into those. I love the Providence Leia Cocoa is actually one of my most interesting folks that I've gotten to read about and learn about. He was the grandfather of the Mustang. And what he identified was that there was this baby boomer group coming through in the mid-60s that wanted a good looking car that was affordable. In fact, I think back then they went for 2,368 dollars and the poundage of those cars was $2,368. It was a dollar for a pound. He was able to tap into the market demand and create something that was affordable and stylish. It's on its seventh generation. It's like the longest running line of cars. I was fortunate enough a number of years ago to buy one. And it just so happened that I was the second owner of it.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the thicket of that discussion and that relevance, in that competitive environment, that's what excites me. There is so much more that we can do with these organizations that transcends product. The quicker that asset managers can get closer to their clients and have these big strategic partnerships, it's a win-win for everybody. How we do that, I don't have the answers to all of that. I've given you some of them, but I think it's worth diving into that even further. And that comes through conversations and partnership. That's what I'm excited about.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that just drives me about this industry is that some people think it's very stagnant. I think it's constantly evolving. You and I have been in this for a long time. I would love to get a conference agenda from 2005, 2015, and now, 120-20 strategies. There was obviously a lot of the hedge fund stuff back in the day. There was portable alpha. I'm sure some of those things still exist and I'm sure people are doing very well in those. But the industry does evolve. And I'm very excited. I think the next three or four years probably shapes the next 10. I personally believe that in an industry like institutional asset management, which is so competitive, the demands on people time, we don't have a right on their time. It is not a God-given right that they should take our meeting ever. But if we can stay...”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Put me in touch. That's interesting what they're doing. I want to learn that. And then there are times where they may even be interested personally in going there. Maybe trying to help them out. A lot of the US pensions now, some of them are considering this total portfolio approach. They've been very public about it. Moving strategic allocation to total portfolio approach. There are organizations that have done that globally for years”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not necessarily in the vice business. I'm in the listing business. I try and illuminate for them what everybody else is doing around the world and how people are taking on the market in different ways. There are growth markets around the world. Australia is a growth market. The Middle East is a growth market. Canada's a growth market. These are defined contribution plans in Australia. They have a compulsory savings rate. But they have to think about things differently, but they have perspective. And I've tried to sync up these different groups. So you should speak to this person. There was a group in the Middle East that I had speak to someone in Australia. Very similar. I'm not on the call, but I'm able to sort of be that facilitator because I'm here and I'm here and I'm here. They're not. Look, I heard this. This may be interesting. And half the time, they're like, thanks for the idea. No mark.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's going to be a problem. Now, things may not happen quick as we want them to. That's just the general cadence of the business. But they are the most important thing, and this will take care of itself. It's the same with fundraising. If you stay in the process, this will take care of itself. People focus very much on the money coming in. There is a massive dispersion in what a successful first meeting looks like for the client and what it looks like for you. I think a lot of managers, they go on the first date at the bar, they have the second date at the bar, they date for six months, they propose, and they get married. That is not a normal state. That is a rock star marrying in Vegas. Last time I checked, they don't work out that long. You have to have this process. It has to continue to follow it. Being a public company will take care of itself if you do all these things right. And that's where I focus.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a business where you have to continue to stay ahead. And if you've had that lens of the stock price on you all the time, you are constantly thinking of how to get better. And I think that in turn helps the clients where the mistake happens is if you put your own interests ahead of the clients, it's about the process. The moment they're unhappy is going to affect the share price. So you can't really think about that. What you need to be thinking about every day, and we've got just under 100 of the largest institutional investors in the world now as clients, is that they can grow alongside us. We can grow alongside them. But if we start focusing on the wrong things,”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is always an apprehension in the institutional market of when businesses merge, acquire. It's totally a natural state to get to because remember they're buying into something with certainty that things aren't going to meddle with the process, that what they invested in is going to continue to be the same. I get it. And it's something that we have to give comfort that comes to transparency, trust and communication. The thing that we've done on the investment side is those businesses continue to operate the way they are. That's number one, table stakes. Number two is there's the constant pressure of being public, having a share price that trades daily, and a lot of the time the conversation is around capital formation, totally natural. We're in an envious position that 90% of our capital is permanent. There's this base there. The way I've thought about it is that”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody pulling together. The other thing that I made a mistake on was I probably didn't add resources as quickly as I should have. An organization should never become bloated. But I probably overendexed that. I had to play catch up for a little bit. Not perfect, but I think we got there now. Should have been in those non-US markets quicker. We were covering them and we were having success. A big mistake and a big learning curve. is that assigning a strategy to limited success data points is not a winning one. Again, you deal with 4,000 idiosyncratic events globally. If you say, well, this is the way it works, because these 10 people did it, or you're missing out on the other 3,900 odd...”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of you is going to decide who covers me. We want to make sure that we're doing it the way our market and our clients want to be approached and getting people to buy into that and realizing that's best for blue owl is something that I continually focus with. It's not easy. We're not perfect. We have to keep thinking of how to get better. How many businesses have been built to last? Truly built to last. We've talked about my old firm and there's a number of other ones out there. But are they fads or are they organizations that will transcend our employment? Where I want to be is sitting on a beach 20 years from now going, that thing is chugging along. It's even better than when I was there and I was there at the start. I don't want it to be something that just sort of troughs. And it troughs if you don't remain focused on the clients and it troughs if you don't build that internal DNA of”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Having a big firm mindset is the biggest one, and getting people to quickly tap into that, the past is irrelevant. We all come here with our experiences, including me, constantly putting all those ideas in the crucible. We've changed a lot. But the most important thing is the client always. Where do they get that comfort? There are so many ways to distribute. I could put 400 people in a canon and shoot them out and say, right, you cover whomever it is and let's see what happens. They can all compete against each other. Or you can build the model that we have, which is everybody's coordinating and working together. And if you speak to the clients, there's a funny story. There's a guy in Missouri who I absolutely love. And he was telling me about a firm once where he was sort of being covered by three people and he organized a conference call. He said, okay, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to drop off the call. And at the end of it,”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's really been tremendous success over the last eight years since you've been around there are always bumps in the road. There are always mistakes. As you brought people onto the team, what are some of the common things you've seen that you've had to course correct with people that are implementing the strategy on the distribution side?”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You also have to understand things, and we work very closely with our legal department and tax department. There's teeth of considerations that go into this. Australia is a really interesting one I mean, it's a long way to go. I've probably done it a hundred times back and forth. I get it. I speak to a lot of Americans. They said to me, I really want to go to Australia. I just don't want to do the flight. Unfortunately, we haven't truncated that distance yet. Australians want to get to know people. They're interested in partnership. It's all about trust. It's very similar to other areas, but you have to be willing to make the commitment to go there and you have to have those resources there. When I think about us growing, sure, I'd love to go continue to go to the Middle East, but I need someone there 24-7. We build a good business there. But the moment we stagnate and think we got it is when we don't have it, so we keep building.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Recently, is have people that have a really good understanding of those markets. They've been doing it for a long time. They speak the language where I was going out to the Middle East a lot and I absolutely loved it. But it was apparent to me that doing it from New York, even if it was six times a year, was not enough. I needed a local. I needed someone that had familiarity there, was in their time zone, also was a demonstration of our commitment to the region. Australia is the same thing. I had a master plan for it. Went out there, I'll be honest with you, Ted, two and a half years ago, we're $150 billion firm with Blue Al and I had good friends and they'd be like, I have no idea who that is. One of them called me Blue Duck or something like that. We were a nascent competitor. A lot of firms have been there since 2008. The Australian superannuation industry is going to be the second largest in the world. You have to have an on-the-ground.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so important to me in this business there are acquaintances and there are relationships and they're two completely different things. You go to the big conference out in California or the one in Berlin in a few weeks. Everybody's running into each other. Oh, I know this person. I know that person. I know that person. We know them. But are you regularly in their ecosystem? I can tell you in Australia, there is a building where there are about three or four super funds in it. I used to go down there in the early 2000s, never have a meeting and sit in the lobby. And people would come in and you would just have these casual conversations with no agenda. Australia is very concentrated in Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne. And how they interact and how they talk to each other and the nuances to Australian culture are completely different from the Nordics. So one of the things that we've done.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are less frequent, less visible, and essentially where there's an inefficiency. We've done really well, but mergers are tricky. One of the things that we have been very focused on is culture. Culture is imperative to us. We've tried to create a softer, gentler culture. You bring in new groups, and particularly in my space, they're coming at it from the mindset of this is how we did it. But now they're part of a $260 billion organization. It's a very different situation. When you work at a bigger organization, you actually have to flex more into what does the client want. And it may not be your thing. But if you have competing verticals, Not a good start. You're just fighting against each other.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a really good question, and I'm constantly thinking about it every day. From a client service perspective, it's the velocity of conversations. It's how the engagement takes place, the constant, maniacal focus on what are people trying to do and how are they trying to do it. The other thing is sometimes step back if there's nothing there to do. Hey, you know what? We're not a fit. But let's keep talking. We are constantly looking at areas where the supply of capital is greater than the demand. And there are only a few people that are capable of doing it. The best examples of that early on were our triple net lease business. In fact, as more people have tried to enter that space, the percentage of the deals that we've gone up is higher. Go into these areas where the competition is less, data centers, going where people...”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very different to North America, Canada. What we've done well is we've shared ideas where there are similarities and we've partnered really well on taking both businesses to the next level. And we do it across the firm. People try and catch up with you. And the question is, how do you outmaneuver? How do you go to where the opportunity is?”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See what happens. I mean, if you think about that, if that client is with you for 30 years, you are essentially selling something of significant value, your preparation and planning and knowledge of that and listening before you go in. I think the only purpose of the first meeting is to get the second meeting. The only purpose of the second meeting is to get the third meeting, and then you're qualifying it, and then you're involving more facets of the business, getting them the familiarity and understanding them. But to go in there and approach it, if it's just like, throw it at the wall and see what happens, man. I just think it's not the right way. What I see the wealth people do that's really impressive is that they are constantly in communication with these people. Their coverage model is geographic across everything. There's nuances similar to us. How we operate in Australia is very different to Europe, is very different to the Middle East.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Institutions. But the narrative has to change as well in terms of how are institutions using this. We deal on the institutional side with about four or five thousand idiosyncratic situations globally, strategic allocation versus total portfolio approach. You have organizations where the boards are very influential. You have organizations where the government's very influential. You have organizations where the asset consultants very influential. You only know that. If you study it and you get to know it. There is a lot of information out there. It blows my mind when I've worked with people and they're like, oh, we got a meeting with this 300 billion dollar pension. Do you read the annual report? The board minutes, you can start to see with a balance of power is in there who's shaping this, the involvement of the asset consultant? No, it's just, you know, I'm bringing Charlie along.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember starting at Alrock and I turn around and I saw there'd been a tremendous infrastructure in wealth built. It was like waiting patiently for when this trend was going to take shape. The apparatus and the planning and the way that has been done has been absolutely flawless. It is a very different industry. The other thing we've done really well at Blue Owl is we don't compete against each other. I think a lot of organizations, it's like, well, they did this and you did this. I mean, the fact of the matter is they're almost like a balanced portfolio. Institutions will typically get into the void when there's a kind of dislocation. The wealth channel, what I've seen that's really impressed me with our business is the coverage model is very similar to the institutions. The way in which it's been built has been that they will cover them just like we cover them in”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Returns. So I used to think that scale was a bad thing. I used to think that you had to be small in the alternative space to generate alpha. But I found that there's alpha in scale. There's relevancy in scale. When you're large, you command a tremendous amount of attention from people. You can't do that if you're small. It's income generation and capital preservation, then the scale and the quality of these businesses, whether it's a GP in a world where people are doing more with less and bigger managers are getting the majority of the attention, you can only do that if you're big. And on the direct lending side, when people are building portfolios, there's absolutely a home for lower middle market, mid-market, upper middle market. It's portfolio fit what they're trying to achieve. But to be relevant to private equity sponsors, and we cover 700.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can I talk about scale on an investment standpoint? I very much bought into David Swenson's book, Pioneering Portfolio Management. One of the premises there was find differentiated uncorrelated returns. The premise around that was that you had to be in the alternative space. And a lot of that he talked about the hedge fund universe. What I identified in that is to really generate significant alpha. You had to go into these small asymmetric deals. And he talks about the dispersion between being a public manager's returns first and third quartile is very tight where the dispersion in alternatives managers is large. So the selection, this one's asset allocation. This one here is manager selection. You have to get that right because I think he talks about VC where the median return for VC actually lagged public market.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beginning and now in your career, you've worked with very large organizations of Blue Alice become. In the middle, maybe not so much. How have you thought about scale beyond what you mentioned, the ability to have the resources to have breadth and depth of client relationships?”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incredibly valuable. But if you just sort of phone it in from there, good luck. There are times where I hope that we're not annoyance. I've yet to hear it. One of the things that I love as well is that the team that we have, it's no one owns something. There's like four or five of us on them for many reasons. I just feel like I can call anybody and I don't feel like you're all competing for my attention. I think a lot of organizations have been built around the fact that The biggest competitor shouldn't be here. So if you're unified and you're collectively sharing that vision, and some of these can be five clients wrapped into one, you've got to go that way. A lot of people do sell on performance. And then when things are dower or the markets against them, they're kind of in no man's land because that was the thing that they advertised.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They are stickier, but performances and everything. It's one of the things. Transparency, client service, all of those things add up to a great experience. Performance is fleeting. What we do is very stable. The way we've set it up, the scale of what we do across all our verticals orientates itself to business that are likely to withstand any cyclical disruption. But that said, sometimes when you get in an area like direct lending, recently the performance dispersion has been very tight. What you have to do is differentiate another areas. The performance of those seed investors has obviously been amazing because not only have we given them strong returns in the product, we've also given this incremental upside. And that incremental upside can be meaningful, particularly in direct lending on senior secured risk and you can get into those mid-teens or high teens.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Understands what's important. I've hired folks that worked at asset consultants. We have people that have been on trustee boards come in and work for us, educate us, say to us, this is the most important thing. You're doing this wrong. This is the way to engage people in the local markets where they have that halo effect of their brand and people really trust and respect them. I'm always looking and thinking of ways to give everybody that experience, whether they're a seed investor or not.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to flex so heavily right now into the investor experience. Yes, you have your seed partners, but if you can treat every single client regardless of size, some clients are small and they want a lot of attention, some are big and they don't. If you can elevate that client service experience, you have to make sure that everybody feels like they're the most important thing. With scale, I don't think every manager has that luxury because you have to be big to do that. You have to be able to hire people. You have to make sure that every single client is being covered regardless of size and the institutional, well, I think we got 900 of them. The other thing that we've done, which I think is completely different, is that I've hired people that have sat in the allocator seat. I had this woman, Alicia Gregory. She was a former deputy CIO at the Future Fund. She sat in that seat.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When we raise new strategies, looking at ways in which we can give them access to seed economics in new funds, in new verticals that we're launching, in extensions of our business, getting to scale requires that. A lot of managers can offer that. We'll offer that and then stop that because now they've grown, giving away those economics is probably not something that they particularly want to do, but you play the long game. And in my mind, Ted, what's happening in the industry right now is this consolidation, the competitive spirits are intense. I've been to Australia twice this year. I've been to Asia. I run into our competitors all the time. COVID taught you was that interpersonal dynamic is super important. I don't think everybody followed up with that. Continually look at ways in which organizations”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Continuation of that, there's a big pension fund out on the West Coast, we have deep respect for they call it the collaborative model. A lot of firms have tried to replicate that, but you can only do that if you grow. And we were able to grow. The message was we want you to ride along this story. We want you to lock arm in arm with us and we want to navigate this together. It was a meeting of our philosophy of how to be partners married with their intent of where to direct capital. And we've continued that.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we quickly tapped into was the definition of partnership. Partnership in the past is we do great, you do okay. We give you a fee discount. We give you some co-investment. What we wanted to do was bring them along for the journey. We could do that because we were small. So we gave them opportunity to participate in our funds essentially riding alongside the growth of these strategies. So providing an added amount of alpha. We were able to do that through the form of giving strategic capital to them, being seed investors in these strategies. And we attracted a cadre of blue ribbon investors, universities, family offices, big pensions. So we added another component to partnership. It's very tough to do that, to give away those economics when you're half a trillion dollars. But when you're small and scrappy, you'll do it. That playbook he invented. The difference is that...”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we got a lot of really strong supporters of institutional capital. We have this wealth distribution business as well, which again is another trend that he identified flawlessly and has executed it really well with my partner, Sean Connor. I saw that there was something that was going to transcend a fad and be something that was built to last. Had a lot of things go our way too. I don't think in this industry you can ever subordinate luck. Success for me is always where preparation meets opportunity. But markets were in favor. The desire to do this was high. The support from the asset consultant community was there. And we had the right strategy to tap into. We were also hungry and scrappy. And I think that there was a cadre of folks in the direct lending space like we're the dominant marketplayer. And we just...”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, put a tremendous amount of resources into the back office. That was when I got there. The majority of the employees. To me, that signified that he was building an institutional framework that was built to last. From there, to get to scale and to do it quickly. And the reason we had to do it quickly, Ted, was we'd identified the upper middle market as where this income generation capital preservation was most prevalent. Those are big loans. You have to be relevant. To be relevant, you need money. So we went to many of the folks that we knew that trusted us and done business with us in the past, Doug, and I'm now talking my own book here, but someone in the industry who's not only a great investor, but someone who is universally liked, which is a rare combination, he was able to cultivate those relationships. There were other ones that I knew.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When there was a normalization, you never saw these big mandates. It was 50, 100 million dollars here and there. But what Doug identified was that the strategy was becoming more institutionalized and more strategic. There was free money out there. You look at a portfolio with a diversified exposure. You're getting two, three percent from fixed income. You've got an actual error rate of 8% or a CPI plus objective if you're a sovereign wealth fund. You're putting a tremendous amount of strain on risk assets. We went around to the clients and what they said was that capital preservation income generation were the most key things. I tapped into the idea that Doug had gone to them. He'd sought where the market demand was. It wasn't like he started a crypto fund and just threw it at the wall and said, let's see what happens. I knew that he'd done all the work to get to that point.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I joined Al Rock in 2017. I was employee number 30 something. I met Doug. I was working at a great organization. I really enjoyed it. I didn't really have any desire to leave. But Doug was looking to grow his business and he called around and he did the right thing, which is you don't speak to people that worked with you. You speak to people that are your clients. And he spoke to a number of chief investment officers. And I guess he picked the right ones, but they were like, there's this guy out there you should talk to him. I went and met Doug in a coffee shop. I think I'd resigned from that firm within two days. I immediately tapped into his values. He said LROC started with a blank sheet of paper. We went about it the right way. At the time, direct lending was considered more of a strategic allocation. It was an allocation that people did episodically. There was dislocation in spreads. They tapped into a fund. And then they got out.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they are paying you. And I'm a professional, so I represented those products to the people that I thought were the most likely to do them. I was very committed to making sure that there was maximum visibility for their strategies with the right people. One of those organizations, an outstanding credit manager, there was a massive sea change of capital going from public markets to credit. And they've done phenomenally well. But my job at the time was just to increase the visibility of the organization.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are a lot of people that find themselves in roles where their values or what you learn to PIMCO isn't necessarily valued at the organization. Having experienced that a couple times, how did you go about your day-to-day in a situation where, look, that's your job. You think you know how to make it work, but you still have to try to put your best foot forward.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Return. What should the portfolio look like? How should we populate it? And then who should we populate it with? These are great organizations, but they may not just fit. I don't have all the answers. But what I've learned over time is tapping into that, listening. People don't listen in this industry in my mind. They're in send mode, not in received mode. And if you're in send mode, you hear what you want to hear. I learned over time that it was so important to understand the investment zeitgeist of what these organizations are.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You learn by losing. I wrote this white paper called Metz, Jets, and Rejects. When organizations go through challenging times, is actually when the relationships need to be flexed into, I think that a lot of people run away from the pain. People don't like tough conversations. But I learn in those organizations that portfolio fit was the most important thing. You can have a great strategy. The amount of times I've had a portfolio manager say to me, this is such a great investment opportunity. Okay, it probably is. But when you think about an organization, like a sovereign wealth fund is very different to a public pension, one of which probably more likely follows a total portfolio approach. Another one follows a strategic asset allocation. When people are doing their strategic asset allocation, you're about the third derivative from choice. Their first thing is, what's our funding ratio? What's our actual rent?”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Made a mistake. I felt like the alternative industry was going to take off. I also had this perception that every firm was like PIMCO. And the organizations I went to were not bad firms. They were really good firms. But one of the things I say to young people who are coming up now, when you're looking to work at a firm, they can be a great firm, but it's not looking for a job. You're looking for an alignment of values. If those alignment of values marry, then you and them are going to be in sync. There's going to be a deep understanding of what success looks like. It's going to be shared how success is. I work for some great firms with some high pedigree people, but they had a different view of going about it. I think their expectations were this is the way things should work. And I had a different view. And that's fine. Things don't work out for everybody in that regard. But I was very fortunate to sync up with Doug. And I think he had a very institutional understanding of how this worked.”
2025-05-15 · Capital Allocators · James Clarke – Building Enduring Partnerships at Blue Owl (EP.445) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source