YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeffrey Becker

lines on the record: 61
first: 2025-04-24
most recent: 2025-04-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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

“Of these asset managers, which was an interesting project. Each of these asset managers had a CEO. These boutiques were pretty fiercely independent. And it was a bit of a bumpy ride as we brought them together. But ultimately we did. We started out in some cases with four small cap equity teams. And in some instances, we selected one and not the others. In others, we might have combined teams. And in other instances, we started all over. So it was a multi-year project to really bring all of what were the acquired asset managers into one integrated ING investment management. And ultimately, I was the CFO of that initially and then later the COO. The CEO at the time came to me and said, you did a terrific job on the integration project. You can be.”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“2003, ING acquired Etna's financial businesses, and that was the life insurance, retirement, and asset management businesses. And so Altis went along with that acquisition. ING had been on a buying spree around the world and in the US, buying up insurers and other businesses and had ultimately ended up with about six asset managers, brands that are now all gone, Altus, the one I came to the party with, Pilgrim, Furman Cells, Lexington partners, rely of Star Research, the original ING investment management. But ING did not want to see these run as boutiques ultimately in the long run. ING had a very integrated model, a monobrand approach to the world, and I wanted to bring all these asset managers together. So I was selected to help lead the integration.”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got a really strong finance team and a good strong controller. I want you to be a more strategic CFO. I want you to work on structured deals, M&A, levers of profitability. And so that turned into a CFO role, which again is a terrific experience for anything you do, really understanding how businesses make money and the levers of profitability is a great experience.”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“HR at Aetna, and I said, This has been a terrific experience, but my gig is up, and I'm probably going to head back to New York City. Is there anything that I should look at within Etna? She happened to be a Colgate grad, took an interest in me as a Colgate grad, and said, yeah, we've got this great little third-party institutional investment manager named Altus Investment Management. It runs pretty independently, has about $100 billion in assets. I'm going to send you over there to meet the young dynamic CEO there, a guy named John Kim. So I went over and met John. We had a terrific three-hour conversation. And at the end of the conversation, he said, you're hired. And I said, I'm hired. What am I going to do? And he said, I don't know. We'll figure it out, but I think you're going to be CFO. And I said, well, I know Arthur Anderson is on my resume, but I actually have never practiced accounting. And so I'm not sure that's the right role for me. And he said, well,”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the things we were doing by working out the troubled mortgage loan book at Etna is we were also working ourselves out of a job. So the job was to wind down the portfolio and we were actually given retention agreements that were two years in duration. And at the end, we essentially were out of jobs. That was a little bit scary for an early career endeavor, but by the same token, it was the first time in my life I ever saw a six-figure. Come at one time, and it was quite rewarding at an early stage in my career. So I knew I was going to be out of a job. Etna was up.”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I was part of the management that ultimately had to determine, you know, the valuation and the credit approval of the different transactions that we were working on, whether that was originally putting out new mortgage loans and determining whether it was a good credit for the insurance company capital, or when we got into the restructuring period, it was about, was this the right deal? Were these the right terms for us as we tried to salvage the portfolio?”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With a whole bunch of mortgage loans that were underwater. That led to a terrific experience for me being part of the workout of all of those loans in the early 90s. So we did foreclosures, we did restructurings, we did equity kickers, and we pulled up some of these loans into CMBS deals and sold them through Wall Street. It was really a terrific experience and really bred out of a crisis.”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You would have thought that. I didn't know what private equity or private credit really was at the time. I had started to shift more and more into real estate. The background of tearing apart financial statements and balance sheets and discounted cash flow analysis was a great foundation really for anything you do in finance ultimately. So it was a great experience in that regard. But I was starting more and more to specialize in real estate. And as a result, I got hired away by one of Anderson's clients, which was Etna, and Etna had a very large commercial real estate business, as you may recall, the insurance companies had huge commercial loan portfolios in those days that they were using to backstop long dated life insurance liabilities. It seemed like the perfect match of asset and liabilities until real estate valuations bottomed out and the life companies ended up.”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did. I did. I ended up there for seven years. It was a terrific experience. It was a great company. In those days, these companies hired crops of undergrads. They trained them together. We learned everything across from accounting to auditing to tax and valuation. I ended up in what was called the Valuation Services Group, where we valued real estate and businesses either for transactions or for M&A activity. And it was a terrific company, a great learning experience. They sent you out to clients very early on in your career, and you also got people management skills pretty early on.”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pay for you to go to grad school. So it was a combined program through Arthur Anderson to go to NYU. And they were originally paying for a master's in accounting, but ultimately everyone parlayed that into an MBA in finance.”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quite the contrary, Barry. I had no idea what I wanted to do in college or coming out of college. I was a liberal arts major. My parents felt strongly about getting me a liberal arts degree and having me learn how to read and write effectively. And so that was the goal. I was in economics, an English major. Econ was the closest thing you could get to business in some of those schools. And so that's what I majored in. I had no real guidance in terms of finance. Neither of my parents were in the financial industry. And so I did what most students did in those days, as you saw on the board who was coming up to interview and potentially hire undergrads. And I saw that what were in those days, the big eight accounting firms were coming up to hire. And they had this program where they would hire liberal arts graduates, have them work. And as part of the arrangement.”
2025-04-24 · Masters in Business · Embracing Global Opportunities with Jeffrey Becker of Jennison Associates · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source