YouSaid · the spoken record

Mario Giannini

lines on the record: 92
first: 2022-07-18
most recent: 2022-07-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“has spent enough time around data and analytics to be able to do portfolio construction and to determine if I'm going to put a little more growth, what happens to my risk return profile. It will get there, I think, in 10 years, you and I will have this conversation, and we will be talking about portfolio construction and whether we're leaning more into growth, more into this, more into that, whatever. But today, my lord, it's a backwater.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's the great weakness of most private equity investors. This is an anecdotal asset class. Like everyone talks about their best deal, their best fun. They never tell you numbers. I had a great deal. It was a 10x. Yeah, well, how many zero X's did you have? What we've said to people is, look, in the public markets, what do they say 90, 95% of return is from asset allocation and then a de minimis amount is from actual selection of securities. In the private markets, in people's head, it is 99 to 1 the other way. It is all about picking the right fund or all about picking the right company. I don't think that's true. I think portfolio construction is at least 50% of return in the private markets. You need data, you need analytics, you need to do something more than spend your time having dinners with general partners going, oh, this seems good. I'm just going to do one of these. And I just don't think the industry as a whole.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Legitimate is LPs yell at them if they're not investing, like LPs hate paying on committed capital that isn't being invested. But God forbid they invested at the wrong time because then LPs yell at them for investing at the wrong time. So it's this sort of delicate balance that they have to play in the sense of, okay, what am I doing? Am I leaning in? Am I leaning back? And so you saw a lot of them, I think, pull back a little bit. Not a lot, but a little bit.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I think you respond in a couple ways. One is you do pull back in certain areas. So, for example, in some of our funds, we did pull back on some of the high growth areas. You just do less of it. You just pull back a little bit. Because at the end of the day, what is hard about private equity in particular, it is a long only asset class. You don't have the ability to hedge. You don't have the ability to short, and you can't buy and sell the way you can in the public market. So you can't do this sort of wholesale amount or I'm in. And so you're really dealing at the margin in many cases and figuring out where am I going to reduce risk? Where am I going to take some of that away from the overall portfolio? And in many portfolios, particularly where you have a big fund concentration of where you have a lot of funds, you're relying on the underlying manager to be doing some of that. But they're in a tricky spot because what you hear from managers, which is legitimate,”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that said, we probably could agree that maybe through the sell-off, maybe eventually private markets reset as well, before that, you probably were at that extreme. You could look at multiples paid and look at implied yields and say, are you going to meet expected rates of return? So how do you respond maybe a little bit less today, but a year ago in your investment pace, knowing that the firms are buying things rich?”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the high growth areas, you kind of looked at things and went, God, it's got to be priced to perfection in order for this deal to work. So then price does matter, and I don't want to minimize it, but we really obsess on pricing to the detriment, I think, a lot of times on a decent investment”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said Mario, you know what price is in the ten most important, where it is in the ten most important things in a private equity deal? And of course, I was like, no, I don't know. He goes, it's number 11. I was like, oh, shit, I didn't know that. It's number 11. And his point was not that it doesn't matter, but I say this to people. If you're a private investor and your goal is a buyout, let's say a normal buyout, two or three X on a deal. And let's take Apple today. I don't even know what Apple is. Let's say it's $130. And you think you're going to buy it on a private deal and sell it for $400? Do you care if you're paying $130 or $120 or $135? You kind of don't. And so I think from a pricing perspective, we spend so much time on pricing and obsess on it as the only thing that matters. And it just is not. It's important, especially at the extreme. So late last year, especially in some”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we're a lot better than we were six months ago in pricing. It's a lot lower. So I think we're probably in a better place. I think Teddy Forstman was one of the great investors in the history of price.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Send this information to a bunch of other people and that it's a two-way street. You're going to give them information too and they're going to give you information and then it works.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Advisory boards are a place where LPs want to feel important and feel really good, and GPs want to make them feel important and really good. And so you have this weird dynamic of everyone in a room going, wow, really important. And we're here. It's like, I need a seat at the table. What's going on at the table? Not a whole lot. Because honestly, what GP is going to tell you a bunch of information in an advisory board that they're not going to tell a lot of their other LPs. They're just not going to do that, especially in this environment. There are people that will totally disagree with me and say that you learn a lot at advisory boards. Come tell me what you're learning. The only thing I think advisory boards do really help is that you get to talk to other LPs in a very, very informal and okay setting. That part is valuable. But learning information, you get much more information having a relationship with a GP where they respect that you're not going to.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People are going to hate this because I don't care. I think advisory boards are a total effing waste of time. I have learned nothing. Here's what I've learned. Zero.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leave me alone, and you could just see heads exploding on both sides over I got you more than what you deserved. Give me more money, and the LP's going, you didn't give me shit. Come on. And I think that that's part of the dynamic. GPs simply do not understand LPs. They look at them as a source of money and give me the money. I got you what you wanted. Leave me alone.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a tense subject because GPs abuse LPs and LPs abuse GPs. I mean, it cuts both ways. I mean, GPs always tell you that this is a long-term relationship. You can't say no once you're in. And that's just not true. And even if it is a marriage, a lot of marriages end in divorce. So you sort of get this, oh my gosh, you can't leave me. Well, yes, I can. You didn't perform, or whatever reason, I'll leave. But I think the thing GPs, and I say this to them all the time, they do not understand LPs. Most of them just don't understand where an LP is coming from. I remember we used to, before the pandemic, run a conference where we'd have a bunch of GPs and all our LPs in a room. And we had a discussion once, which was fascinating, on return relative to the public markets. And some of our LPs were going, yeah, you didn't give me more than the public markets. And the GP answer was, so what? I got you 21.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't need to work. I mean, it sounds horrible, but there are some people that are, I will call them mid level at some of these firms that have been there for fifteen years, and they've made more money than most anyone on earth will make. And they just go, I don't need this anymore. And that turnover, I think, is a little different. Then you've got to figure out, is that person someone that really contributed to the success of the firm, or it can be replaced? And that, I think, is, again, you got to figure it out piece by piece.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's one of the great things about our industry. So limited partners tell general partners that they hate turnover and turnover is bad and turnover is awful because my partner is leaving. I believe the reality is turnover is necessary and turnover is important. Tell me an organization that has been successful, that has had no turnover. I can't find it. I defy anyone to find it. Yet we are our own worst enemies as limited partners when we say you cannot have turnover. So I think for us the turnover is a question of why is there turnover? Is it because good people are leaving because there's not enough opportunity because the place sucks, you know, whatever it is? Or is it that it's a natural process of this person wasn't good enough and they're bringing in a better person? Or which is part of the reality of this industry, have some of these people made so much.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're going to have people leaving. You're going to have problems. So I just think you have to look at what institution is saying that they are, that they're going to do, how they attract people, how they get portfolio companies, and then do they do it. I don't know that there's a one-size-fits-all. I think part of it's cultural. I think Europeans do it very differently from how the US firms do it. It's hard to say. But this issue becomes a little aligned with this, the greed issue. This is an industry that is really disliked. It's extraordinary how disliked we are. And we do it to ourselves. We do it to ourselves with the amount of money that sloshes around and the way generally as an industry, we act like, well, we deserve it because we're getting you returns. Stop complaining. Just give us more is what you should do. So we'll give you more returns. It's not a great look.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a hard one because they're all so different. I hate to punt. I normally don't punt. I have opinions and they're crazy, but what the hell? It's hard because it depends on the organization and it depends on who's doing what. Here's my view on how this is an industry that generates an enormous amount of money, just an almost compared to other industries almost obscene in the sense of how much money it generates. And so how you divide that within particular companies, I think, is very idiosyncratic because it will depend on, again, that decision-making structure. It will depend on how you want to reward people. I think what is more important is what you're saying consistent with what you're doing. If you're saying to people, everyone here has an opportunity to make X, but that's not how you economically divide the pie. You are going to be an inherently precarious institution.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm in natural resources was a big thing. Everyone was in oil and gas for a period of time. It's essentially a commodity play and no company is going to survive when that commodity goes down. They're going to struggle.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think from the sector perspective you'd have to look at a couple of things. Is the sector, when they say they're in infotech or software, it's so vast that the drivers of return, the drivers of what will make the industry will not rise or fall. The multiples may in the public markets because they lump them in together, but the industry dynamics themselves will not rise or fall in unison. And we're seeing that now. There are some parts of the software industry that are fine, some parts that are struggling a little more. So I think from our perspective, that concentration is probably okay. It's like healthcare. It's such a vast thing. Are you doing biotech in healthcare? Are you doing instruments? Are you doing delivery services? They don't all act together. I think what you worry about concentration in an industry is where there is one thing that happens. So if I'm concentrated in banks, well, they rise or fall kind of at the same time.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd love to turn to the question of concentration, and in particular, there are a few, let's call it technology focused or software focused buyout shops. Think of Vistartoma Bravo and others who have done really well in an industry. So to the extent that you mentioned that concentration has been one cause of great firms declining, how do you think about it in, say, a sector focus where there have been some that have really made it through that specialization?”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good. I think the test is going to be in a downturn. When do we have a downturn and how do these successors really fare in a downturn? We just haven't had one. We haven't had one for 13 years and the jury's out on whether we'll have one now. But I think the early indications while we all worried about the big firms and how they would do succession planning, I would say they're doing a very good job of it. I think it's the middle sized firms where then we're really going to have to see because many of those firms really are at the end of the day dominated by a couple of people. And I'm not sure that a lot of them are setting up the kind of succession planning that you would look at and go, I'm really comfortable that this is going to work and we're going to have a new team that can take it over seamlessly.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's two ways to the question in two parts. One, I think for us as a firm to maintain those contacts, you do try to maintain it throughout different levels of the general partner organization. So at a Blackstone, for example, I'm going to pick any firm. We have people who know people within different functions, within different areas, within different age groups. And so you do try to maintain all of those contacts. You have to because you're right if XYZ person is gone and that's Mario's connection, then you have no connection. That's just an unsustainable business model for us. I think on private equity, there's always been a real concern about succession planning, and there should be because part of it is there are such outsized personalities that you think they cannot be replaced. Guess what? They are slowly being replaced. And I think that most firms, particularly the larger ones, have done a decent job of at least on paper the succession planning and bringing people that are very...”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are dealing with some of the smartest best salespeople will ever meet, and so at a dinner really, you're going to get to know Mario to dinner visa GP. With me, you will, but you won't like it, but you'll get to know me. But I don't know. I think you got to have connections all around the industry to really feel your way through that.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a few ways. One is just familiar with the people. I think one of the few virtues of being as old as I am is, you know, you kind of have been around a lot of these people and you know them and you know people you can talk to that know them and that will give you information and that you won't burn them and they won't burn you. I think that's again we're in a private industry. We can't look up what's going on in the journal and you don't have public board stuff where you're dealing with all that crap. And so you have to have a connection of people that you can talk to and go, does Mario really do this alone or with whomever? I think that's unfortunately the best way to do it because they're not going to tell you, honestly, why would they? I always hear, well, I have dinners with these people. I really get to know them. These are the greatest effing salespeople on earth. They just are. They really are. They're so good. I say that to people all the time.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Someone like me looking at it from the outside in any firm or someone looking at our firm from the outside, it's hard to know how real this sort of, oh, we're partners, we love each other and we work together, how real that is. And I think when you discover it, probably is in downturns, unfortunately, when you see what really goes on.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It has to be some kind of shared decision making. I think it is very hard to have a firm where someone does everything alone. One of the things that's always struck me as interesting about the private equity industry is when you look at certainly some of the firms we all know, they had a shared decision-making structure. When you look at KKAR, there's two people. When you look at Carlisle, there's three people. When you look at some of the great firms that have done really well in our industry, it is not one person, and it's not fifteen people. So I think you have to have this group of people that are cohesive and a decision-making structure that is not totally centralized, but that is centralized enough that it is not diffuse around the entire organization. And that's a hard thing because it means the people have to trust each other and be willing to have a realistic back and forth.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a few things, I think. One of them I know this sounds silly. Lack of diversification. What really cost a lot of these firms was they bet big either on one company, one industry, one place, and as smart as these people are, and they're really smart strategically because they're investing for longer term, they have no choice, they make mistakes. And when you put too much in one place, the other thing I will say is it's greed. Some of the economics that some of these firms are not shared appropriately and they lose key people and too many people want to keep too much of the economics and it blows the culture up, especially when it's a culture that says they're not like that. I always like that part. No, no, we're all about all our people and our clients. And then you look at it and go, how come you're taking everything? Well, because I'm a genius. I'm the smartest. I should.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think people should underestimate the genius really in some cases when you look at a blackstone, you look at a KKR, you look at an EQT. It's not easy. And there are a lot of companies that failed in this process. You know, you don't hear about Forceman Little. You don't hear about Hicks Muse. And these were dominant companies in the 90s. I'm telling you, they were the ones that if we'd had this conversation in the 90s, Ted, you'd be saying to me, Mario, how big is Hicks Mews going to get? And I would say they're going to be ginormous and they aren't. They made mistakes. You got to catching that lightning bug in a bottle. It's very hard and you need a really good team around you and you need some clarity around where you're going to grow and a willingness to make mistakes. You got to screw up a lot.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my lawyer days were really workout. And so you're dealing. And the turnaround I did was basically a company facing bankruptcy. And that really gets you very focused. You're going to lose your job. You're going to lose your company. Everyone is kind of on the same page. What I've learned about a growing company in a growing industry is that it is much harder than a turnaround, oddly enough. A turnaround focuses you on sort of the existential crisis. The problem and the challenges for growing a company is that you have a number of different choices. You have a number of different paths you can choose. You have a number of different cultures you can create. And you've got to get everyone focused rather than having this exogenous event making you focused. It's hard. I think one of the underappreciated stories about the private markets is the talent required to build some of these firms into what they”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investing as a company, we're structured, as you'd think most companies in the investment world are. You have the investment side, you have the client facing side, business development, and you have the infrastructure all around that. So that's fairly standard. I don't know that there's many different ways to cut that. On the investing side, again, one of the big changes in the industry over the years is everyone always used to do one thing, like you did private equity or you did private credit. Now you do everything and we do everything. So we're structured with, I'll call it the equity fund side. You have the secondary side. You have the real assets. You have all of the different sleeves that you're doing. And then you have the different parts of it, the wealth management side of the equation, the institutional side. So we have all of the different investment sleeves that take care of the different parts of the illiquid market that now constitute alternatives or private markets. I'm never really sure what the in vogue term is.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tom, I don't think you can spend that much money. It's just too much money. I don't see how you can do it. And like two years later, he came in and said, you idiot, it should have been two and a half billion. It's that kind of thing where you look back and go, oh my God, what the hell were we thinking?”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, Blackstone at the time, I don't remember the exact number. He probably remembers exactly. They were looking to raise a few hundred million. That was the goal. And I think I remember at that point that he wanted something like a billion and we all thought he was, oh my God, what is he crazy? And I'll tell you a story. Tommy Lee, I can recall a conversation with him, and he, of course, will tell you every time you made a mistake, which he has thrown at me later, he had, I forget what the fund was. It must have been $800 million. So this was probably in the mid to late 90s. And he was coming back for a fund of, I remember it was like a billion to a billion four. And I remember saying to him, because I'm a genius.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're gigantic. We're large. We are now about 550 people, which doesn't sound very large compared to a lot of companies, but when you're from four, it sounds huge. We are 150, 160 billion under assets under management with another 800 billion under advisement. So we're near a trillion dollars in terms of assets that we touch. And that is large. But when you think about the industry, there's a lot of big players. That's the part that's extraordinary. You know, when we first started, the assets under management were, what, a dollar? And in 30 years, when you think about going from that to almost a trillion for just one firm is saying something about how far the industry has come and how much capital and how much influence it has, it's really an extraordinary story over a fairly brief period of time when you look at things like that.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the industry now is part of everything, whether it's private equity, private credit, infrastructure, the illiquid part of portfolios is now an established part of how you invest. If you're not in it in some way, you're not really having a balanced portfolio that's going to perform. I know that's 30 years encapsulated, but it's from nothing to something in 30 years.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of a sudden, the industry exploded, as we know, into the great financial crisis. I've said this to people, and I know it sounds terrible because there was a great deal of loss and suffering during that period, but that is when, to me, private equity, private markets establish themselves. It was the greatest thing that happened to the industry. And I know people go that asshole. What's he saying that for such a horrible time? But it's because at that point, everyone hated the public markets. I didn't know it could go down 40%. I hate this. Everyone hated hedge funds because they lied. They didn't really tell you what the risk was and what the return was really going to be. Real estate collapsed. Everything fell apart except private equity. And everyone went, oh, I get it. I kind of get the drill. And then I think it just exploded from 08. I think the industry has been on a drug high since then in terms of people wanting to be in it. You don't have to explain anymore, should you be in private equity. It's how much and what areas. That's what it is today.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then it just made money. And the reality is that's the part that people forget is not just money for the very wealthy people that we all yell at and say they're too wealthy and they don't deserve the money, but money by the limited partners, by institutions, by endowments, by people that matter that make the money. And it began to grow. And what made it somewhat odd was the buyout industry is growing through the 90s, but then all of a sudden it was the internet. Remember, you got things eyeballs. If you had more eyeballs, you had a higher value. I mean, now it sounds ridiculous, but that was the thing. And it became dwarfed by that. And I would say one of the highlights is everyone looked at private equity as the internet, as the venture world, and that collapsed in 2000. And so everyone said, well, I don't want to be in this anymore. I can recall in the 2000 era having to explain to people what the hell is private equity and why do you want to be in it? And that was really the challenge.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, at the beginning it was just a bunch of people who were sort of finding their way, figuring out what they wanted to do in buyouts, explaining what the industry was. People didn't know what private equity really was. They knew there was this venture group that kind of did stuff that no one really understood.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was three or four people who sort of had a notion of doing something in private equity and helping institutions and it was a young industry. I don't even think I knew what the hell private equity was, to be honest at the time. I just knew it was people that bought and sold companies. And that's what it was. We were helping large institutions. And literally three or four people. Steve Schwartzmann tells this story. I wish he'd stopped telling it, but he tells it all the time. When Blackstone first came to see Hamilton Lane, so this must have been 92, 93. I don't know. We were all starting together. And he knew Philadelphia, so he knew where we were. And he comes up and gets lost because we're nowhere literally four flights up or something. And he said, I come in this conference room, and there's Mario sitting at a table that's a card table with duct tape holding one of the legs together. And he thought”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so a group of us took over a company and sold it and I was on garden leave. I had no idea what I was going to do and ended up coming to Hamilton Lane. It just started. And I never left. I was like the bad penny. I thought I was going to stay here for a little while and then take off and I never did. I've been here for 30 years. So when you talk about someone who someone referred to me once as the accidental CEO, it's sort of what I am. I enjoy it, so don't get that part wrong, but there was no rhyme or reason to it. I've said to people, I meet all these younger people in particular that have their life so defined they know exactly what they want to do, how they want to do it, when they want to do it. And they look at me and they go, so how'd you do this?”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes I don't know how I got into the business. It's sort of a series of fortunate events, as it turns out. I started professionally as a lawyer, which I say that it's like being a reformed smoker. You talk about that life and you go, oh my gosh, lawyers, they're horrible. The reality was I wasn't very good. I just wasn't a real good lawyer. It requires a patience and an attention to detail that I simply didn't have.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pricing environment. We then turn to Mario's perspective on constructing private equity portfolios, data analytics, the middle market, continuation funds, LP appetite, and opportunities across subcategories and geographies. We close with aspects of Hamilton Lane's evolution across co-investing, customization, going public, ESG, democratization, and the future of the industry. Please enjoy this wide-ranging and fascinating conversation with Mario Giannini. Mario, great to see you. Thanks so much for doing this.”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My guest on today's show is Mario Giannini, the CEO of Hamilton Lane, where he oversees nearly a trillion dollars of assets under management and advisement in private capital, making it perhaps the largest investor in private equity in the world. Mario joined Hamilton Lane 30 years ago and has spent the last 21 as its CEO. His breadth of knowledge and experience, alongside a times unconventional views, offers an unparalleled bird's eye view into this powerful area of investing. Our conversation covers Mario's background and a brief history of the private equity industry over the last 30 years. We discuss three characteristics of private equity firms that struggle, decision-making, concentration, and greed, and views on private equity firms across turnover, GPLP relationships, LP advisory boards, and the”
2022-07-18 · Capital Allocators · Mario Giannini – View from the Top of Private Equity at Hamilton Lane (Capital Allocators, EP.262) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source