YouSaid · the spoken record

Joshua Fenton

lines on the record: 61
first: 2024-08-19
most recent: 2024-08-19
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

“Probably the best advice I ever got that what we do is important, but it isn't brain surgery and the patient doesn't die. So have a sense of humor about what we do and recognize that we do get an opportunity to figure it out and change course and correct a mistake.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to twist that a little bit on you. I think one thing that I've learned is that instead of giving advice, people respond better if you give them information. And so I guess that would be the thing that I would ever tell somebody is if someone comes to you for advice, don't tell them what to do, help them get information that will let them decide on their own. Because it's very hard to just take someone's word and just do it because you have biases that are built into your brain. And at some level, you already know what you're going to do no matter what anyone else tells you. And so I think the only way you're really going to make a better decision is if you have more information than what you started with. And so I don't know if I was ever told that or just realized that, but I think that would be one of the most important things I would say that I've been told or learned is seek information.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So many lessons that I've learned, probably the other most important lesson is that I didn't accomplish my forty five year career by myself. There were a lot of people who helped me along the way, and sometimes they weren't who you'd expect. Most people think in terms of well, who was your most important mentor and who taught you the most? No, sometimes it was the guy in operations who put M&Ms on your desk because he knew you were having a bad day. And it was something like that that made all the difference in a world sometime. So recognizing people who you wouldn't normally recognize, but truly are helping you be better at what you're doing, even though it's not blatantly obvious. Being humble about the fact that I didn't get here by myself was another important lesson.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I think back about my career, I don't think about it in terms of legacy accomplishments per se. I think about it truly as lessons learned. And I realize probably the most important lesson is no one could stop me faster than I could stop myself, and that if I wanted to be successful it was really important for me to get out of my own head and allow myself to pursue whatever it is that I wanted to pursue, stop putting up gates in front of myself. The other thing too that I learned was pay attention to that tickle in your gut because it probably means something really is going wrong and the sooner you deal with it, the sooner you won't have to deal with it. I can't tell you how many people let something get wildly out of control because they ignore it, thinking it will go away. It rarely if ever goes away.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, wow, I have an LP who has the hundred other energy relationships. They've been investing in managers for 60, 70, 80 years. I don't know. Maybe I'll go ask them. That thought almost never occurs to the managers. What would you guys like to see in concept? What is your experience about how your managers have dropped the ball or done it in a really elegant efficient way? And I feel like there's so much concern about privacy or I guess containing control or spooking investors that a change is coming that there seems to be a pretty deep rooted reluctance on the part of managers to survey their best clients about what might be the best way forward. Just help me out here. The clients would love to help you because they don't want you to go in the wrong direction and create a problem.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one thing that I've really been struck by talking to managers about this topic is they're pretty much a succession situation that hasn't happened that you can't think of. There's an example of hundreds of really badly handled situations and dozens of really well-handled situations. But despite that, when a manager experiences one of these things or it has to confront it suddenly, there seems to be a real lack of awareness of what worked really well for someone else and what didn't work really well. And I'm going to come up with my own answer all on my own. I find that attitude extremely surprising and frustrating that managers don't think about this a little bit more proactively, but at least go out and say, who did this really, really well? Who did this really, really badly? Let me look at those two examples. Which train am I on right now? And how can I think about fixing it?”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Transition that doesn't mean you have to announce it or telegraph it or brag about it or whatever. You could do it the way that I did it very quietly while you're working on determining who would be the best successor. I truly believe that promotions from within are the least disruptive, and that to me was the most important characteristic about the transition that was important to manage, especially seeing what had happened at some of the foundations and endowments in New York where there was disruption caused by the CIO leaving. In fact, Helmsley had to play defense protecting our own team from being raided by these other foundations that suddenly were shorthanded staff because they didn't plan or manage their own transition.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's interesting that you ask that question because we had a situation where one of Helmsley's managers lost its managing partner very suddenly bike accident. And the question was who'd take over? In that case, the situation was well managed because there was a deep bench behind the managing and founding partner, so there was somebody who could step in, the CIO, and he could do so seamlessly he'd work closely with the managing partner, and there was unanimous consent behind that within the money management firm itself in the face of such a shock. Piece of advice number one is ask the question before it happens. It can happen. So everybody should ask the question and formulate a well thought out answer. Step number two is it's never too late to start thinking about a transition. People should actively be managing a”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow and the trustees did ask me that right away, I gave them a name, but it's something that's just there in case the team has currently configured, could it manage the portfolio for a year or two while the trustees decided how they wanted to go with the next step? So I think the continuity that Raz built is still there and strong and is still supportive. But yeah, it's a disconcerting question to get in your third month in the role, I have to say”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Real benefit I've had inheriting a team that I actually interviewed every single one of them and onboarded every single one of them. So when I joined Helmsy in 2012, there were two other staff members in the investment office. Both of them moved on for their own reasons over the subsequent five years. And we built out the team to 10 investment professionals at the same time. So I feel like there is a lot of continuity and understanding about our team and what the trustees expect of us, how we do our jobs, what the governance rails are.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Toward highly illiquid long term private investing over the last 30 years. And I'm not sure that the current environment is as robust a scenario for that. And inheriting a portfolio or building with RASA portfolio that's 40% in privates, that's something I want to be really deliberate about. What does it look like 10 years from now if it needs to change? We have to start making those changes today very gradual, incremental ways in order to get to where we want to go. You can't flip the switch in this business and change your portfolio asset allocation when 30, 40, 50% is in private equity.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Without being specific, I have two parameters. One is I have a goal of where I would really like Helmsley's asset base to be, or at least on a very strong path to that goal before I even consider what my timeline might be. I'm only 55, so there is a bit of a flexibility about where that would be. So those are really the only sort of things I'm thinking about at the moment. It's just too early to really even plan that there is a tremendous amount of change going on in the markets. I think the environments are slowly returning to what I would call normal pre-financial crisis levels of investment scenario. There are obviously big adjustments happening as we speak. But I think there's an environment that will have impacts on how institutional portfolios are allocated. There's obviously been a massive”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though you're very new to the seat, if you mapped out Raz's model at some point in time, you might have thought about your own retirement. And I'm curious at what point in time do you project thinking about a transition plan for whenever it is that you're no longer in the seat?”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And made a priority not to schedule things that conflicted with that, if at all possible, so that anyone felt like if they had something they wanted to just talk about for five minutes, they could come in and I would not be absorbed by something else. And while I have to say only about 10% of the time had someone used that office hours, every time it has happened, it's been an incredibly productive experience for both of us. So I really wanted to keep that open door feeling going and this one sort of official way to do it really worked.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the biggest surprise was while I knew conceptually that managing people would be the largest use of my time actually doing it and seeing it is a big change. It was something I was trying to be very, very deliberate about. I wanted to be the one who was talking at the end of a meeting instead of at the beginning of a meeting as much as possible so that the organic nature of idea, discussion was maintained coming from an investment background. Sometimes it was hard for me to not be the first one to say this is what I think. It's three times as important I don't do that when I'm running the department. Then the one thing I also really wanted to make sense that people could drop in on me whatever they had an issue. And so one thing I did is I blocked out the first hour and a half of every one of my days that are in the office. I called it office hours.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I don't think Roz just walking out of the building disrupted that slow pipeline. And so none of us felt like this was going to be something where Raz would be surprised or alarmed, where she would go, wait, you guys waited to do this because you knew I didn't like it until I left. There was never any chance that that kind of thing happening.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Concern about anything we were planning to do. And to be frank, we haven't opposed a new manager in the first two investor community meetings because we've been focusing on the strategic plan. The other thing that was a big topic starting in 2022, when Ros introduced this idea of her retirement, was we'd gone from a zero-rate interest rate environment for 12 years to a rapidly changing interest rate environment. And that in and of itself had queued everyone on the team. What's different? What are investment strategies we looked at five years ago that didn't work in zero interest rates and might work a lot better now? What do we own now that might not work as well in a 5% risk-free rate versus a 0% risk-free rate? And so those conversations had already been started when Roz was still there and were working through all of the discussions on the team about where to move.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's really important to understand that new managers take a year or two to sort of emerge through our process. We don't have a need to make quick changes. And so we generally do a strategy review of is there something we want to do that's come along that's new or something we don't have that we want to investigate. And that can take six to nine months to really get consensus on the team whether we should start looking for a manager there. And then the manager search starts and that can take six to nine months. So it is a slow moving process. And so right off the bat, really there was nothing that was changing at the margin. Raz had been part of all of our conversations for the last 18 months about some of these issues. And so I think there was no real.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“10 years, 12 years had been 2%. And the question was, should we bump it up? I let the team kick that around and they came back and we brought that as one of the issues the investment committee. But when I assigned the delivery of all these pieces for discussions in the committee, we spread the workout so everyone would have time to present and be seen by the investment committee because I think that's an important skill set that everyone needs to eventually develop and something that Raz had always given everyone on the team the opportunity to be front and center for five minutes and take questions from the committee. That's something that at least everyone in the Helmsley Investment Office relishes that opportunity. And I wanted to make sure that that did not change.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We all think about these three general guiding questions, and then we'll get together and start iterating from there. And the kind of things we had to adjust were, do we need to change our inflation assumption? Because as a foundation, our goal is to last into perpetuity. We have to pay out 5%. That's the IRS mandated payout. So our long-term performance objective is 5% plus inflation. Obviously, inflation had been a hot topic. Our baseline for the last”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the most important thing I wanted to keep the same is that I would talk the least of my teeth. So our first investment committee meeting was something we do every five or six years called the Strategic Plan or what most people would consider a base asset allocation review and understand how we want to make some tweaks to the core asset allocation of the portfolio and how we want to think about what we might want to do differently. That was our first investment committee meeting with Ros on the other side of the table. And so the first day back in the office in 2024 without Ros, everyone knew this was our first project. So I divided the team up into three different analytical working groups, gave them some very general guiding questions, and said, let's find out what...”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You go and take over CIO and leading into this first investment committee meeting where Raz is now part of the committee, when you step into that seat, what are some of the things that you thought of either keeping the same and maybe doing a little bit differently”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probe the degree of confidence that an analyst had when they brought an investment forward. I felt that Josh's ability to generalize was stronger than the other members of the team, and that was probably a key differentiating factor.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other three all came from money managers and had that similar sort of background in different categories. One was a strategist making investment decisions at more of a macro level. One was also managing money at a major, major money management firm. One came out of a hedge fund and had handled risk and investments there. So they all had direct investment experience, but they also had specializations. So one of the things that I was looking for is who could step out of their primary area of comfort and generalize across the entire portfolio. Could people be expert in all the other areas as well? Would they be able to know what kinds of questions to ask?”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd love to turn back to you and ask you a little about your evaluation of Joshua and the others on the team as you went through this process. Not everyone had that in-depth direct investing experience before they joined you that Joshua did. I'm curious how you saw that as an advantage or where some of the other aspects of that were either beneficial or different from some of the other people on the team.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was their initial reaction that was different from the eventual conclusion? And really by asking those kinds of questions, you can really dig into the process. And I think it's important when you're evaluating a manager to really isolate who's making the decision, who is really getting to the real crux of this is a really good idea, this is an okay idea, this is a bad idea. Is it one person who always comes out with that decision or is there some depth on the team where those decisions can be made a little bit earlier before they filter all the way up to actual competing for portfolio positions? And I think understanding that nuance within a manager, there's no right or wrong answer. You have to understand that nuance within how a manager builds a portfolio to really understand what you can expect from the manager when you actually invest with them.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A strategy seems complicated or is not something where you have full transparency like some kind of quantitative strategy, it always helps to go right down to individual investment examples and really dig into why did this pop up on your radar screen? How did you decide who to assign to do the work on this?”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you think about when you came across the other side of the table with deep domain expertise in one style of equity investing, the various other asset classes you got exposed to and how you thought about asking those good questions when you might not have had as nuance of an understanding of how those strategies work?”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's really important that managers understand the awareness of what they're really doing and to break that wall a little bit in the conversation early in the relationship. And one of the ways to do that is by asking details about investment examples and then flipping back to the generic slide deck, you can generally find inconsistencies. And you want a manager who's going to not feel like you just called them out and get really defensive. You want them who's going to acknowledge that the process is a very unspecific process. It's a very go where your nose leads process. You have to be adaptive. You have to be flexible. And managers that try and pretend that they're not being flexible or not being adaptive, I think that comes across as less sincere.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A director of research and an analyst a long time ago for that, you can really ask questions about the process of security selection and research within a team much more effectively and bluntly having been in that chair and then having been called in for the big pitch meeting to the pension fund and say, well, this is how we're going to talk about this and this is how we're going to talk about this. It's not exactly the way you're doing things because there's a lot of scratches and dents to managing money. And those are not the things that you present to clients or potential clients. So that nuance between the shiny new car and maybe some of the scratch and dents that you're not talking about, I really enjoyed jumping into those scratches and dents with the managers right off the bat and looking at the expression on their faces and saying.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I've really noticed right away when I joined Helmsley and started interviewing managers. And obviously, I had been on the other side of the table pitching long only public equity strategies. It almost became funny that I was hearing this language given back to me that I know how it was crafted, how it was created, I was part of building these slides. I call it the dreaded funnel every investment manager has. Well, this is our universe, and this is how we narrow it down. And it was almost comical to be on the other side and hear this pitch that I know was just, I wouldn't say it was phony, but it was just so managed. And I felt like my experience.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Josh, before you join Helmsley a dozen years before, you spent a lot of time in the direct investment world, what did you see as similar or different in your, say, last 12 years before taking over CIO from those experiences in the direct side?”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things or follow their noses wherever those noses would go. I came from the buy side where it's very common to present an investment idea up the channel and get a hard no and you just got to move on. But in the asset allocator space, especially when you're managing a generalist team, you can't just say no to the first pitch. You've got to ask questions about where they think this might go and then let them keep going. That's an adjustment that I've had to make just moving to the asset allocator side intellectually where I came from a world where you got to know when you moved on because it was always another investment idea you could find somewhere. But this approach of letting people really look for truffles and give them some time to really dig in, really paid off.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one thing that had been really drilled into me by watching Roz be CIO for her 10 year was to really reach out to your team and find out what they want to do and where they want to grow. And so it was really, really clear that that was an important step to take before Roz left the building, so to speak. Those are the conversations that I had with everyone. We are making some incremental tweaks to what people are actually doing in their roles now because of those conversations. And so I think that was something that gave everyone just comfort that I wasn't going to increase or create rigidity in the functions of the department that weren't there before. I was going to go out of my way to give everyone opportunities to do different things.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once that announcement got made, at least internally, that you'd be succeeding Raz, I'm curious what kind of conversations you had with those who had been your peers that now would be part of your team.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There really wasn't. I think there was a pretty comfortable adjustment to the situation. So I don't want to go further than that and try and pretend I know what they were all thinking. But I didn't get any feeling from anyone on the team that there was any kind of sour grapes or concern about the transition at all. I really didn't. And I feel like the way the team has risen to a very quick challenge in 2024 really confirms that there really wasn't a lot of potential doubt in what was happening at that moment.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Josh, going back to that 18 month window, it's hard to imagine among you and the three peers at the time that there wasn't some type of water cooler chat at some point in time about this whole process.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I wasn't given a choice, but second of all, I think ideally that would be the best way to do it because it gives the successor the opportunity to get his or her sea legs under them without necessarily the scrutiny of sitting there in front of your boss. One of the things I was concerned about is that the team would be reticent to bring forward a recommendation that they think I personally wouldn't like. And I had to come to grips with the fact that I wasn't the CIO anymore. My job wasn't to approve or disapprove. My job was to ensure that all the policies and the procedures that Helmsley had were adhered to test conviction and ensure that due diligence was appropriately undertaken. The team is compensated through an incentive.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Joshua had an opportunity to watch how I managed and while he certainly would be different, I think some of the underlying tenants were the same open door policy, let people come and talk to you whenever they felt the need to do so, be open and honest about what's going on. Those basic management style issues, I think he's maintained, and that's what has ensured that the transition was so smooth. Then we get to the first investment committee meeting where for the first time I'm sitting at the opposite side of the table. And it was strange. It was very weird. Linda Strump for a moment of personal privilege granted it and I just acknowledge the elephant in the room that this was going to be weird but we'll all just get through it.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and explaining to them what was going to happen, I told them what the proposal was for my successor, I told everybody to think about it, and I told them that I wanted to have their reaction to it positive, negative, whatever it was, because I wanted everybody to feel comfortable. So Josh and I both had to digest this idea of my being appointed to the investment committee. And I explained to the team that that was something that the trustees had asked that I do, and everybody's jaw dropped because it's not common. But we all had eighteen months to get used to the idea. People came back to me with questions and comments, and we discussed them if it was something that I felt I needed to discuss with Joshua, I did. Nine times out of ten there was a very good answer for people's concerns.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you definitely want to succeed me? Because we have to go down this path. And he looked at me and he said resoundingly Yes, I do. And so I went back to the trustees and I told them what my transition plan was and how I intended to manage it, and their immediate reaction was well, we're appointing you to the investment committee. This is the committee I reported to for the last nearly fourteen years, and that stopped me cold, because I thought to myself how would my successor feel knowing that I'd be appointed to the investment committee, it effectively would look like he would still end up reporting to me. So I was quite concerned about that, and I went back to Josh, and we had quite a few conversations about it. And then I went about talking to the other directors and talking to everybody else on the”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually had a retirement date even though it was eighteen months in advance, they were shocked. And I said to them, Look, I was going to tell you in January I said so what I want everybody to do is to just absorb the information and think about it. I also want to talk to my staff. And I said, I have a transition plan in place, and of course they immediately wanted to know what it was. And I said, well, I haven't talked to anybody about it yet. Would you please give me a day? And so they gave me a day and I left the meeting and I go running into Josh's office and I sat down and I looked at him and I said You and I have been playing this dance about whether you would really be interested in succeeding me if I were to step down and I explained to him what happened in the meeting and I said so now the rubber has to meet the road. I'm asking you straight out, Josh.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what happened is that the matter in effect was taken out of my hands eighteen months before I retired I was in a trustee's meeting giving them an investment update, and the news was not good because the markets weren't good. Inflation had finally taken hold, interest rates had started rising, and the market started rolling over. In the middle of my presentation one of the trustees just stopped me and looked at me and said You can't retire. Are you going to retire? What are you going to retire? And I thought to myself, OK, I have a decision to make here on the fly. I could either play this off or I could tell him straight out that I actually had a retirement date. And so I decided to be honest with him and I said well I am going to retire in December of twenty twenty three. So when I told them that I”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you got within that 18-month period and you had announced your pending retirement, how did you sequence the conversations that you wanted to have both internally with the team and with the governance board?”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was the part that was most important. But I think it's also important to know that when the rubber needed to meet the road, I did sit down with everybody on the team, including people who would not be my successor. And I had a heart-to-heart talk with everybody about that I was going to step down what I wanted to propose to the trustees and how they felt about it. And I gave them a lot of time to think about it. I informed Helmsley eighteen months in advance of my leaving, and that gave plenty of time for people to get used to the idea and used to the transition. It was the communication and the open and frank discussion with everybody that I think made the difference. I was willing to listen to whatever they had to say, and they were willing.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had a very good understanding of each of the four directors and any one of the four could have succeeded me in taking over. I spent a lot of time going into their offices, sitting down and talking with them about all kinds of things, not just work related. Sometimes there were things outside of the office. I was looking at temperament. I was looking at their interests, I was looking at how they think about problems. I was thinking about the fact that we had younger members of the team who were very, very different from each other. Who could be the most malleable in their management style to deal with each of those different people and what they needed? Those were some of the things that I was considering and doing it in a way that I was trying not to let on to anybody what I was doing.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you started thinking about dripping these different leadership and management responsibilities onto Joshua and the other senior people, the goal is continuity. And that's worked out. How did you manage four different potential successors when ultimately there's only going to be one seat?”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things, Ted, that I think it's important to understand about Helmsley is that the team is set up not in buckets or lanes or categories. We give a lot of latitude to the staff to work on a lot of different projects. In doing so, it keeps them interested and motivated because they're always looking at new and different things. That's both a benefit, but it creates a bigger management challenge, and that's why everything that Joshua just said was so important. An opportunity would come up to work on a particular project, and it took management skill to make sure it didn't become a jump ball. And that's what Joshua was referring to, how to manage those sensitivities within the team.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're concerned about why don't you write it? I'll take a look at it. And so I started thinking about how to hand off those kinds of tasks other people on the team in a way that would sort of balance their strengths and maybe develop some of their weaknesses. And I think that's another thing that's really important as a CIO is to give your team members the opportunities to grow professionally without dropping problems in their lap, being for mental about it.”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes on a team, there are new things that crop up, new events, new projects, and there needs to be some clarity on who's going to be handling it and who's going to be assembling the final pitch to the team about how to handle it. And no team can be 100% clear on new things about who's going to do it. And so I think some of that early stuff was just getting the group together and finding out who really wanted to do it, who thought this was an opportunity for them, trying to think about who on the team could professionally benefit from stretching to try something new. I think that was something that Raz always was very good about doing for me. Basically, this is something that you probably need to learn how to do a little bit better, get some more practice. So why don't you try to do this? Why don't you send this particular email to this manager telling them what?”
2024-08-19 · Capital Allocators · CIO Transition – Roz Hewsenian and Joshua Fenton, Helmsley Trust (EP.401) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source