YouSaid · the spoken record

Matt Botein

lines on the record: 75
first: 2019-02-25
most recent: 2019-02-25
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

“With regulators, and we went to see the Fed and without betraying confidences, it was clear to me that it was not the direction of travel in the Federal Reserve System at the time to give new banking charters to anyone. But if they were going to give them to anyone, it wasn't going to be somebody whose pedigree said hedge fund private equity.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because what does the world need more than a nice clean bank? And at the time, deposits were really, really cheap that it cut rates and variable rate mortgages were very, very high rate. There was a lot of spread between the two. So I thought this is really simple. I'm going to start a bank focused on high net worth depositors because you can get big chunky deposits. Take the money and lend it out at high spreads to really good people. And that'll be great. So I called an old mentor of mine who was a professor in college and in business school, Bob Glauber. I said, Bob, I have this idea just like we did the mortgage business. We're going to do a bank. And he said, that's great. And he'd been on the board of the Boston Fed and he'd been undersecretary of treasury and he'd run FINRA. So he had a lot of credibility.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I really enjoyed that part of the job, but it was clear to me by that point, six years in, that I enjoyed that part of the job a lot more than I enjoyed the public securities part of the job, and that there were other people who enjoyed the public securities part of the job way more than I did. So then I thought, well, I'm going to go, and I had a great idea, I'm going to leave, and I'm going to start a bank.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then there was still an opportunity there because this was still in the era of open side pockets to dabble in private equity investing. So when the hurricanes all took place in 2004 and 2005, I was able to take some time and capital and we set up a sidecar reinsurance vehicle with Excel capital. When we got forward into the mortgage crisis, was able to take some time and some capital and working with BlackRock, set up a mortgage business to focus on the same basic approach if following a hurricane you start to reinsure then following the mortgage crisis you start a mortgage company. And so we set up a business to buy service, refinance, distress residential mortgages.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't realize how much I needed it or enjoyed it until it was removed a level to the nature of those relationships in a public context. And Highfield is very forward on relationships relative to a lot of public securities firms, but the Still Reg FD and there are rules and there are barriers. And so it fairly quickly I realized I actually miss sitting down in management and talking about things and thinking through what are our allocation priorities for capital, for time, for people. So I miss that. On the other hand, it was a great environment in which to learn. And so I just dove into it and rounded out what I knew about the P&C insurance business and a little bit about the mortgage business with life insurance and banking and other forms of specialty finance, mostly public.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think incorrectly, I thought investing is invest in. You do your work, you understand industry dynamics, you understand competitive positioning, you understand the financial structure and outlook for the company, you value it, and whether it is buying a company in whole or in part through the market shouldn't really make any difference. And that was very much the high-fields mantra, where value investors who are deeply engaged. I learned something important about myself in the process because I probably always thought of myself as more cerebral, less emotional, less relationship driven. And when I got to high fields and started investing there, pretty quickly I realized that I actually missed the level of engagement that I had with portfolio companies or prospective investment management teams in private equity.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have a job. If she doesn't match a bust and no one will know that we ever had this conversation. Sue's a great candidate, so she matched.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If there's any question, and my wife is from Boston. So I called Andre Perold and said, Andre, I think I may need to move to Boston. Do you have any ideas for jobs? And Andre was amazing and put me in touch with a couple of people at the Harvard Endowment, with John Jacobson and Richard Grubman from High Fields. And I went and saw them. John and Richard were awesome. understood my background that I was not an experienced hedge fund investor, that I came from a private background, that I had spent a lot of time in financial services. They didn't have anyone who spent a lot of time in financial services, and that my move was contingent on matching in a residency process. And they were great. They said, listen, tell you what, if she matches in Boston,”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was graduating from medical school and we started to think about where are we going to raise a family. And I think that the data would be pretty clear that you end up raising the family where your wife is from.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That deal and look at others, and then supported it with some animal support, but also partner support. Because as an associate, you really shouldn't be. Fortunate deals, and that wasn't lost on them. But it was a really miraculous kind of thing because there were people there, mentored figures there of equality that they didn't try to stifle or control, but wanted to support. So guys like David Blitzer and Brett Perlman, who David's still there running the tech ops business and Brett went on to form a private equity firm with Bono. But they both just stepped in in a way that I had support and I had sponsorship without being told, don't you dare be creative? And so it was really terrific. And I developed a lot more knowledge about insurance and other forms of financial services. And then we got to 2003. I gotten married. She had gone to medical school while we were in New York.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Byrne, who's like this legendary chairman and CEO founder of White Mountains Insurance, called Steve Schwarzmann with a deal opportunity. And I think Steve must have looked way down a list to see who had financial services experience. And there was very little at the time. And so he ended up calling me and saying, why don't you go work on this? It was first or maybe second year associate at Blackstone. Next thing I know, I'm in Hanover, New Hampshire on a deal team of one meeting with Jack Byrne and hearing about what he was planning on buying and how he would manage it. And by the end of that project, I was what would pass as a financial services person in a firm that had not at that point specialized at all in that area. And so they gave me a huge amount of latitude to go off and look at”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A friend was unbelievably helpful because they had someone to ask questions of. Michael was great. I could ask questions of him. And so I learned a lot in a short period of time from some really smart people. And then I'd say to the credit of the firm, it's a big market leading firm, but it hasn't lost being entrepreneurial. So even though it had this great market presence and mega fund, Mega Fund back then was $3.6 billion. They still were actually really encouraging of going off and discovering new territories, which was like the next bit of luck because I was one of many media and telecom people at Blackstone at the time. And it was clear that was a crowded space. And there are other areas that were really uncrowded. And one day one of those presented when”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really intimidating. Everyone there just knew so much. They threw me into a deal and one of the great things that Michael Che, who's now the CFO of Blackstone, was my first deal boss. And he knew how little I knew. So even though I was the associate on the deal, gave me the responsibility for doing the financial model. And I looked at the other financial models that third and fourth theater analysts had put together in their 50 pages long and really sophisticated. And I had done strategy consultant Excel, which is a different language. So he gave me that to do, and then we progressed the deal and we had to organize the financing, so I had to negotiate the financing documents and the purchase and sale agreement and the shareholders agreement. And this was muscle memory for everybody else. And it was all new for me. But there were great people around me having, in this case, having Harry as an office mate in addition to being”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who is a brilliant and unmistakably hardworking guy? So if you want to be intimidated in your first day in a major private equity firm, share an office with Harry Wilson”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did disappear. They were lost in our last move. But it was a great experience except for the part of it becoming clear that the fund was not getting raised anytime soon. But then again, back to luck, Mark Bodnik kept in mind where I was and when things looked like they might not go anywhere, called over to Blackstone where he'd come from. And they were looking for another associate. Blackstone would never have interviewed me coming right out of business school having no private equity experience but between Marx's endorsement and the fact that I had some nominal level of private equity experience, they took a gamble and gave me a job and I moved over to Blackstown and it was like an unbelievable opportunity. Very intimidating the early days. I shared an office with Harry Wilson.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Biannual Retreats for family-owned businesses. It was in Hawaii. That was fun. My wife still teases me. My luggage was lost, and I came back with my interim clothing I had bought there, which was match set Hawaiian outfits.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh gosh, there were a bunch, but I was still in media mode at this point. So I do remember going down to the Florida panhandle to look at buying the St. Joe telephone company. Most people don't know there are still this Verizon, there's AT&T. There are like 1,100 other phone companies in the United States. One of them was the St. Joe Telephone Company. Remember wandering around the Florida panhandle with the guys from Bresn in communications who had sold the cable business and I'd brought in to be our partner looking at the phone business. Maybe the highlight was going to the OPASCO conference, which you probably have never heard of. It's the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telephone Organizations.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I showed up to Lizard a couple of weeks before I joined, before I was set to start, Mark Bodna called and said I'm leaving to go and help found Silverlake. And I also learned there were some issues related to Lazard's investment business, particularly the real estate business, that were likely to delay somehow the fundraise, but showed up to work, and it was a great opportunity. Even though we had fundraising uncertainty, there was a little capital and there was a great team, David and Tom, artificial people, became good friends, were great mentors. And so with no experience but good teachers, started working in private equity and figuring out what it was actually about. And because we were small and thin and young, they let me go off and do things that I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to be able to.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't want to be an investment banker. I was more interested in the life after the deal than just figuring out the deal. And so I thought, well, I should go and do private equity. And then realized in business school that there were a lot of our classmates had actually done private equity. And as there was a queue to get those jobs, I dawned on me I was not at the front of the queue. So what did you do? Well, I went through the process, but it was very humble.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always find we had a bunch of great classmates who were there and the people who were in the department were great and they learned a lot and had a good time”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a kid, I had been interested in investing in stocks, and I read a bunch of business books by the writers of our time, so barbarians and the like. But it was just an interest, not something I had acted on in terms of being a professional investor. So my first formal finance work experience the summer between first and second years in business school and worked at Goldman in the mergers department. And then I thought, well, now I'm ready.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I loved it in the early experiences. I worked on glamorous projects for Nynex, trying to figure out what it cost Nynex to generate a bill. That's where I learned the difference between promise of consulting and the reality. And they went off to business school, and while I was there, thought more about what I wanted to do and the angle from which I wanted to approach things and became more interested in being an investor. the small matter of I had never been an investor before going to business school.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was a fairly accidental path. My first couple of summers in college, I worked and I worked in cable TV for one of the cable TV barons, the guy named Bill Bresn, and hanging out with Bill, I fell in love with the media business and thought, I'm going to be a media baron too, and went to work in strategy and went to Walt Disney and then Boston Consulting Group before going to business school. So I was clearly on a media telecom path.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Graceful exit from BlackRock, flexible investment approach at Gallatin Point, and perspective from meeting a wide array of large pools of institutional capital globally. We finish with his take on the opportunities and challenges for private equity, headwinds for hedge funds, and real assets for his personal portfolio. Back when Matt and I were in school together, he was renowned for taking an occasional snooze in class, getting cold called by the professor, and waking up only to offer the most plugged in and articulate answer anyone could have imagined. I suspected tapping into his brilliant mind would provide lots of food for thought, and he certainly didn't disappoint. Please enjoy my conversation with Matt Botin. Thanks so much for joining me.”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My guest on today's show is Matt Botin, the co founder and managing partner of Gallatin Point Capital, a billion and a half private investment company he founded after departing from BlackRock, where he had served as the chief investment officer and co-head of the firm's 160 billion dollar alternatives business. Before sitting atop that lofty perch, Matt formed a bank after the financial crisis, was a managing director at a hedge fund Highfields Capital and a private equity principal at Blackstone. Our conversation starts with Matt's early career experience, touching on differences in public and private investing and forming new financial companies after periods of crisis. We then turn to his reconnection with Larry Fink, who in short order tapped Matt to run BlackRock's giant alternatives business. We discuss his unusual”
2019-02-25 · Capital Allocators · Matt Botein – Flexible Investing and Institutional Challenges (Capital Allocators, EP.88) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source