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Jonathan S. Lavine

lines on the record: 71
first: 2022-04-08
most recent: 2022-04-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I will look that up. I think it was in the New York Times, and I will definitely look that up. I do think there are so many metaphors that can translate from sports to life. And I do think that his discipline and the class and grace of his game teach us a lot about how we can conduct our lives. But also when you look at Nadal, there's lessons from how he conducts himself. And he has a particular humility. And I just think that as we said, the metaphor does translate.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That you can't be all things to all people. So know what it is that you're doing and do that. Two, I'm a huge tennis fan. And I should mention Christopher Clary's book on Roger Federer that just came out was phenomenal. But Roger Federer over the years, early on, people thought wasn't going to make it. He insisted on playing with a low technology undersized racket when people were really turning to power games to just crank up their serves. He continued to focus on the technique served that he has. And he has a one-handed backhand. And as everyone was trying to tell him to change his game and it was unsustainable, he actually knew who he was. And he knew what his game was.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have an expression I use a lot with the team, which is it's never as good as it looks or as bad as it feels. And that when the markets are doing great, avoid the temptation of enjoying it too much. And when the markets are bad, remember that markets operate in cycles and there is another side. anniversary a few years back I wrote a letter to investors and I had three pictures that summed up some of the things I had learned one was a picture of a clothing pag that said one size fits all the other one was a picture of Roger Federer and the last one was a picture of the moon landing and the point I was making was one we know that you never walk into a store and say I want a sweater do you have one that's one size fits all”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know why you want to do it. If you do it just for the money, at some point, that won't be enough. And if you're only doing it for the money and not because you're interested in it, then the money won't be there. And I think with any career you choose, you've got to pique your interest. You've got to be good at it. And you want to make sure you know why you're doing it.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What she's saying is that the religion and the belief existed all along. She just had to find it. It's been with her. It's been here all along.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes heavy topics, but with a humor and an approachability that is fascinating. And I just think his books are so incredibly well written and so readable that during the course of the pandemic, I read three of them.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just finished Bob Iber's memoir The Ride of a Lifetime, and I thought it's just both a fascinating personal story as well as interesting thoughts on management. And I always try to read fiction and nonfiction. I have one going of each at the same time. And I discovered during the pandemic an author named Frederick Bachmann, who's a Swedish author, and he wrote a book called A Man Named UVA, which is OVE until I heard an interview with him. I thought it was pronounced OV. And he also wrote a book called Anxious People in Bear Town. He tells incredibly interesting stories. They're all very different. They all sort of have twists. And they explore some really important.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our traditions that came along well afterward. And while clearly it's about Judaism, you could apply this to any religion and just think about the philosophical underpinnings of religion and when people move away from their faith, do they do so because of belief, because it's unapproachable? It's just brilliantly written. There's a chapter in there about imagining God. And she's like, you actually don't have to believe in God in any sort of traditional sense to be a person of faith. And she's like, I can't tell you what God is. I can tell you it's not an old man with a beard sitting on a chair. And it could be anything from the energy between us all as people to some concept of the force from Star Wars. And it's just a fascinating book. And I also...”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we talked about Brian Stevenson's book and what an incredible impact it had on me. Another interesting book, a woman who I become friendly with through the Holocaust Memorial named Sarah Hurwit, was Michelle Obama's lead speech writer. But when she left government, she didn't write a book on politics. She actually had rediscovered her Jewish roots. She had been fairly non-observant and reimagined religion and seeing it as an adult in somebody who focuses on language reimagines or investigates her Jewish roots in the Jewish faith through the use of language, through the difference between what the values of the religion are versus the observances that”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really matter. People on your team and how you treat people at the various companies you're investing in. That makes a big difference. All money is green and people want to want to do business with you. You've got to live your values every day. Secondly, there's not only one way of doing it. Mark was always a little bit more of an engineer and Bob was always a little bit more of an artist. And they recognize that in each other and for me to become the third musketeer of that group early in my career really was helpful. And they've both since retired from the firm, but I spoke to Bob last Sunday. He's teaching at HBS and Mark's got an office right around the corner. And that's, I think, part of the beauty of the firm and how we grew up together. And also, honestly, being in Boston, it's just a little bit smaller. And then my father.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm really lucky that I showed up at a firm that really believes in partnership and mentorship, and we use the word sponsorship. It's more than just mentoring. We're responsible for each other's success. When we were quite small. And early on, I worked with two partners really closely, a guy named Mark Nunley and a guy named Bob White. Mark was from Kentucky. Bob was from Wooburn, Massachusetts, had been a hockey goalie in college. And it's so reflective of who we are as a firm. Mark went to Central College in HBS. Bob went to Bowdoin, played hockey there, and also went to HBS. So very, very different background. They had very, very different approaches to investing. And I learned with working with them that,”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, there's this guy, Nate Bargatsi. He has the Tennessee kid in the All-American average guy or something like that. I mean, it's something funny like that. And, you know, he's hilarious. And it's self-deprecating humor. It's clean. It's not political. He's really, really good. And the beauty of Netflix is you find one you like. And then you can watch two or three others because they probably have a whole library. And then Mike Berbiglia has some really, really interesting thought-provoking comedy specials there too that we really like. And then Eliza Schlesinger, who won last comic standing on NBC, had gone To college here in the Boston area is hilarious and has a number of fun concerts on Netflix.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Believe it or not, I have not watched the whole thing because I couldn't get my wife to watch the whole thing. So as travel is picking up, that's on the Stream It Alone camp.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And because of that, the Patriots beat the Raiders and went on to win their first Super Bowl. And I know that sounds crazy, but I watched it for an hour, and I just thought it was fascinating to listen to Tom Brady and Charles Woodson, who had been his college teammate, who was the guy on the Raiders who knocked the ball out, relived that 20 years later. So I think that you can find lots of interesting things to do and things to watch. And I don't think it always needs to be business material. I listened to a lot of podcasts on politics, on history. And I think that we're so lucky to live in an age where we can stream all that stuff. And of course, I always make sure to listen to this business podcast.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I mean, the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum is walking distance from our office, and it was just fascinating to watch and so much I didn't know. And then I'm a huge sports fan. And I think the ESPN 30 for 30 are just absolutely fantastic. And you can find all sorts of stuff that can keep your interest. I even watched the hour-long documentary on the tuck rule, which was that first, that playoff game that made Tom Brady's career where there was a debate whether or not he fumbled the ball in the snow and there was a little known rule in the NFL which they took away the next year called the tuck rule and he had not tucked the ball back in and he so it was ruled an incomplete path”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, besides Ted Lasto, the morning show, Schits Creek, which I think everyone loves and people have really, really taken to. I think Ted Lasso may go down as one of the great philosophers of our time. My wife and I actually, particularly with all the difficult events that have been going on in the world and you can focus so much on what's going wrong, we actually enjoy periodically just streaming comedy concerts. And Netflix and HBO have a great array of comedy concerts where you can just laugh because I do think we need to all laugh a little bit. I also, as we've talked about, I very much enjoy documentaries and not just Ken Burnstuff, but some more often. I really enjoyed on HBO. They had a documentary called McMillions, which was riveting.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always believe that we not only have a shot, but will win until events or otherwise prove me wrong. I'm a true believer, and I think that the talent we have on this team is capable of winning any day. And if they get it all working, the beauty of basketball is the playoffs are like a second season. And as long as we make it into the playoffs, I think we can do anything.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, as somebody who grew up in the Boston area, I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and went to Games with my dad since I was little, the opportunity to be part of the investor group was so exciting. Steve Paluko, one of my partners, was friendly with Wick Grossback and Bob Epstein, and the three of them put together the group that bought it a little more than 15 years ago. They had a vision of local business leaders, people who cared about philanthropy, cared about what the team meant to the city of Boston. And it's been great. I was on the board for the worst season we ever had and on the board for a championship. So it's been amazing.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's just so many lessons to be learned. And the work, the educational work, it's more than a museum. The educational work that the Holocaust Memorial Museum Council does and the museum does, not just on Holocaust, but on genocide more broadly, I think is really, really important. And I am incredibly proud to have served and continue to support them because it's so important that we learn the lessons and that we do not repeat them.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and how easy it was to look away, say it was far away. And there are a lot of lessons to be learned to see what happens when people are bystanders and think it's not their problem. And when you look at Charlottesville, you know, I'm not sure people understood the symbolism of people with tiki torches chanting, Jews will not replace us. And that that comes from Nazi Germany. And, you know, there's an old adage that, you know, when you forget the history you're doomed to repeat it.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was an absolute honor to serve. It's a cause that really important to me and my wife. The Holocaust is not just a moment in history. It's not just a time of a group was anti-Semitic. It shows you that when you forget the lessons of history, those atrocities can be repeated again and again and again. And there's a whole section that was opened while I was on the memorial board, which is about America and the Holocaust and what we did or more appropriately didn't do during the 30s.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of Congress to emerging filmmakers because he remembered that when he started, the toughest thing he had was getting what's called the completion grant. He could do all the raw filming, but really pulling it together in something that was production worthy. So we agreed to sponsor and we do to this day a prize through the Library of Congress, which provides completion grants not just to the winner of the award, but also to a couple of other runner-outs. They're different size grants so that the next Ken Burns can have an opportunity. Over the last couple of years, Ken recognized that their diversity and documentary filmmakers, just like we talked about in finance, wasn't what it should be. And we came Together with him and also fund a fellowship and mentorship program that he started to”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because a lot of people reduce the some of the Vietnam stories to two very famous people, both of whom are heroes, who served. And what he wanted to do is tell the story of a whole mix of Americans and what that story was. And that is the beauty of Ken's work. And as we've gotten to know each other, we help fund a film. He did a shorter film on the Holocaust and he's actually got a multi-part series on the Holocaust coming out later this year. We talked about the importance of who is the next Ken Burns. And he came up with this idea and asked my wife, Jeannie, and I if we would join him in funding a prize given by the library.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So while Kent's film came out in 2017, I had met him about seven years earlier. One thing as I've become friendly with Ken over the years and my wife and I've become really good friends with him is he starts thinking about his projects a decade out. He literally can tell you what he's going to do in 2030. And when he approached me on the Vietnam War, it was very important to him that this have funding from people who would be associated with being Democrats and Republicans to immediately take away any possibility people would think that this had a political agenda. He also very purposely in the film does not interview John McCain or John Kerry.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so it starts with making sure that education in the United States works. Secondly, I think we've all got to recognize the problem. We've got to recognize that people with different lived experiences do not have the same access to starting businesses, the same access to capital, the same access to all the resources that you might see more obviously in a traditional sense in Silicon Valley. As an institution, we have committed ourselves to try to help improve that in business equity in the city of Boston. And many of us support other organizations across the country which are all trying to level the playing field as I discussed. But the first thing is we've got to be aware of the disparities. You can't fix it until you name it and you own it. And then people have got to recognize that there's work to do.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, if I had all the answers, I hope it would be solved because other people smarter than I am would have figured it out. But I do think it starts with the educational system and making sure that public schools in the United States aren't just good. They're great. The number of folks I went to public school with who now send their children to private school is staggering to me.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And, you know, I thought it was so important that people understand both the type of work that he is doing, but the need to do that type of work, which is just incredible that that's still necessary in this country. He and I actually did a joint appearance on NPR six years ago to talk about it and talk about how somebody like me had come across the work he's doing down in Alabama and how I just thought it was so important as an American to do whatever I could to help not just rectify these types of injustices but actually make sure they stop happening.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically framed, and it was completely and totally racially motivated and discriminatory. And he did a, there's a section in there about children who have been sentenced to life in jail and the horrible trauma that they go through. And I read this, I'm humble enough to tell you I was shocked. I thought I was pretty aware of what was going on and this is years and years and years before George Floyd. And I was like, how can this be happening in America? And I actually called Michael and said, can you introduce me to Brian? Jeannie and I would love to meet him. And we got to meet him. We've gotten to be friendly with him. We gave him one of his largest early gifts. He had been around for a while, but we gave him a substantial gift.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And money will solve a problem. And effectively, what Lyft does is they're life coaches. They help people budget. They help with financial literacy. They help people learn how to take care of their health. And it's almost like life coaches for people who otherwise don't have it. How to do a resume. It follows the great line, give a person a fish, you feed them for a day, teach them how to fish and you feed them for a lifetime. And Lyft has done just amazing work. They very much focus on underrepresented communities. It's generally mothers. And they have had just amazing results. It's now run by a woman named Michelle Roan Collins. And then lastly, several years ago, just when Just Mercy”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the things the CEO did when I first met him is gave me three financial aid letters and asked me to read them and tell him what I thought the best package was. And it was really hard. And he said, now imagine your kid in South Boston whose parents didn't go to college and this arrives in the mail. How do we help explain that to them? And they now work once again using technology with hundreds of thousands of kids across the country. And lift communities was founded by a woman named Kirsten Lodel, who I met through an organization called New Profit here in Boston, which does venture philanthropy. And Kirsten started Lyft her junior year at Yale. And with the belief that people need a helping hand too, it's not always people need money.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“London, Northern England, and South Africa and Johannesburg. And I've seen the power of commitment and idealism to help solve problems, that the problems we have of opportunity aren't intractable. And along that theme, we were introduced to smaller organizations at the time, UASPRE, helps students find financial aid. The financial aid process in the United States is unbelievably complicated. And it started by helping Boston public school kids just learn how to apply for financial aid. It's one of the number one reasons that students don't apply to college is they just assume it's not accessible to them. People don't realize that even understanding financial aid is super complicated.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is the National Service Organization, City Year, when we started volunteering with City Year, they had come to my business school section. A friend of mine had helped them with their business plan, and they had a vision of putting near-peer mentors and public schools across the United States and using them to help students see their potential and help prevent the dropping out. We didn't have much money back then, but we gave them $18, which is high in the Jewish faith, which stands for luck and life, and for some weird reason, I kept the check. I still have that check and have been involved with City here for more than 30 years. I chaired the board. I was on the I was on the board for 15 years, and I've watched that organization grow to 3,000 young core members volunteering in schools in 30 cities in the United States.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My wife and I both went to public high schools and had the ability to obtain incredible education, both undergrad and graduate. And at no point in my life when I was walking through the halls of my public high school in downtown Providence, did I ever question that there might be a ceiling on what I could do and what I could accomplish? And that's just not the case today. We recognize that we have been incredibly, incredibly lucky. There's a lot of people with the same skills I have that just never had the opportunities that I have had. And we focus a lot of our philanthropy on what we call leveling the playing field. So City Year was the organization that was used as the models for AmeriCorps.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who played a huge role at that time in trying to help us understand how this could play out? And also what it took to develop a vaccine. And I had never put much thought into how developing vaccines work and how they worked and who would take them. And that was incredibly helpful. And that part of the firm continues to be incredibly helpful today to this day.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sense it enough to recognize that there was a human toll that this was taking, both in human life and people were starting to die, as well as fear. And I thought at the time in my partners and I talked about it, that boy, we don't really know what's going on. And sometimes people think you should zig or you should zag. But really what you should do when you don't know what's going on is stand still and watch. That's what we did. We didn't panic. We didn't try to guess one way or the other. We set out a framework for how we were going to look at this, how we were going to think about the safety of our team as well as the security of our portfolio companies. And we're very fortunate at Van Capital because we have a life sciences group with real doctors and people with PhDs.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investing is not the prediction business. It's really about adapting. And I use a framework a lot with the team called the OODA loop, which actually comes from the military and how they would teach fighter pilots to orient themselves in a dog fight, a time of high uncertainty. And it tells you that you need to orient yourself to where you are. You need to observe what's going on. Then you need to decide and then you need to act. And it's a loop because you do it over and over and over again. And at that time, it was clear that we were in a situation where we were not being asked to price risk. We were being asked to price uncertainty. And we were humble enough to see that nobody had exactly gotten this right yet.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And not just think about, well, I want 10 more recruits. And just the other day, we did an informational session on Zoom and had 200 or 300 students from colleges across the United States learning about what we do, learning about the case method of interviewing. And we're going to see how that works. And you just have to keep experimenting, leaning in, and be willing to take some risk because doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Group of people. When you don't hire a lot of people in any given year, we have 1,500 people. And we may hire 20 associates and analysts, maybe 40 associates and analysts in the United States a year. That's not a huge amount. And therefore it was really easy to just lapse into keep going to the same schools you're going to. And we recognize that that wasn't going to solve the problem. So we are using Zoom to host informational forum to teach people about what investing is, who we are, to coach people on the interview process, whether the interview with us or somebody else, and really start engaging with larger groups across the country. And we think it's incumbent upon everybody in our industry to make the industry more accessible.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a huge issue in finance in a lot of industries across the US. And we recognize that we have to apply the same creativity we do to our investments and to our portfolio companies to bringing a more diverse group of people into the industry. Obviously, underrepresented groups, but also diversity of thought, diversity of geography, diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds. And we also recognize that we can't solve it ourselves. And we have made sure to consult with expertise and partner with organizations like MLT and FDO. And we have found that technology has really helped us reach a broader”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are from the local market. We didn't send a bunch of people over to London and say, hi, I'm from Boston and New York. You're happy to meet me. We actually built a local team that does business and has participated in the market. But early on worked very closely with people who had moved over from Boston or they spent time in Boston so that the culture of the firm could grow as we moved across the globe. And I think that's really, really important is the biggest challenge you have in these types of situations when you are growing globally. You've been very successful in its single geography is just trying to replicate it without being sensitive to the local norms and local networks. And what you need to do is find a way to maintain the core firm culture and the platform advantage that you bring, your reason for being, but make sure that you find ways to incorporate”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we view ourselves as a global firm. One of the things culturally is we don't view London or Hong Kong or Melbourne as overseas because to them it's home. And in fact, about half our partners are outside the United States now. And so we have learned a lot from our global expansion over the last 22 years. And one is that each market There are some core principles of what makes of good company, what makes a bad company. That does translate our investment style does translate. But there are different norms, different ways people do business. There are different laws. Lending is different from geography to geography. And you want to be sensitive to that, which is why all of our offices are predominantly people.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I step back and I reflect on that period of time and what we've learned over the last two years, it really has brought out the entrepreneurial spirit that defines us. And it has brought us closer together. People hop on a Zoom with colleagues in Mumbai with more ease and more comfort today than they used to go from the 37th floor to the 38th floor to ask somebody a question. It's just been amazing to see the resourcefulness that individual people have brought to this situation. Great investment opportunities across all of our business units. And while I never would like to do it again, I am just incredibly proud of what the team has accomplished and to be part of it. And I know that may sound corny, but it truly has been the finest hour for our people. And the compassion and resourcefulness people have shown has been amazing.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be it sped up. New laptops, screens. A lot of firms spent a lot of time figuring out what they were going to do. And we made the concerted effort to enable people as fast as possible. In Boston, we even had a group going around with literally a pickup truck and they moved our trade stations, our trader stations, and reset them up in their homes within the first week of the pandemic. We never missed an hour.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, because we have such a big global footprint and such a diversity of businesses, from life sciences to obviously private equity and credit and tech growth and venture capital and many others, we were used to working across our platform. And how do we activate our platform when we're looking at various situations? We obviously had never encountered anything like we saw in March of 2020, but we had the technology in place and huge credit to our technology team that everything worked. We decided early on that we were going to make sure everybody from the most junior analysts to the most senior people in the firm had any technology they needed at their homes. If they needed routers, if they needed their internet.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And therefore, as rates go up, the amount of interest we receive goes up. There's very little fixed rate in the private credit space now. Secondly, you have to step back and ask yourself, why are rates going up? They're going up, yes, because there are some inflation, but also because the economy is growing and the economy is doing well. And the Fed needs to tap the brakes a little bit. And that would suggest that there will be fewer defaults. So it would be a good market to lend private credit.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our expectations actually go up in that scenario for two reasons. One is most of the way we loan in private credits is through floating rate instruments.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Access traditional capital markets is pretty good. And when you make a credit investment, when you make a loan, you look at the spread you're getting and then you always net out what you presume you're going to lose in default over a period of the next two or three years. I think not enough people look at loss adjusted spread that in bad markets people probably underestimate what the losses would be and in good markets they probably overestimate what they're going to lose because of defaults. And just like during 2020, we correctly thought that the whole world wasn't going to default and that a 3%, 4% default rate wasn't the end of the world. The default rate year to date is less than 1%. So it is well below average. And when default rates are below average, you would expect”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say that what we're seeing is, once again, more bespoke opportunities on the one hand in our special situations business that You know, there's no cookie cutter solutions out there and access to capital is still in some segments still pretty tight. I think that there are some people who loan a lot against enterprise value. And we will do that a little, but we're not comfortable relying on getting paid back. We're okay taking return from the equity markets, but we need to believe we're going to get paid back on debt instruments in traditional debt ways. Preferred stock and structured equity and things like that are a different story, and that's obviously where equity valuations make a difference. On the lending side of our business, in our private credit business, in our CLO business, in our bank loan and bond business, default rates are incredibly low. And the economic outlook vis- ⁇-vis default vis-a-vis companies' ability to”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two offices in Australia. So we were able to do analysis and have a view that others weren't able to have because you couldn't get to Australia. So we really felt the value of our platform during that period of time.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we were right. We just had the wrong years. But that said, there was a lot of there was a lot of distressed opportunities and rescue opportunities available that we could do. The footprint that we operate with, the 21 offices throughout the globe, also made a big difference because being proximate to so many different geographies and being able to participate in so many different ways, we were able to do business locally as different geographies were opening and closing. And we could visit real estate sites someplaces in Ireland or in Greece or in Spain because we had a presence there. When we were looking at Virgin Australia, we have two.”
2022-04-08 · Masters in Business · Jonathan S. Lavine on Private Equity Investing (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source