YouSaid · the spoken record

Nick Rohatyn

lines on the record: 98
first: 2026-01-22
most recent: 2026-01-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Where are we in the macroeconomic cycle that will lead you to one of those three asset classes? If you choose the best asset class in a given year, in a given country, somewhat consistently and by somewhat consistently, I mean barely over 50% of the time because the dispersion of returns is so enormous, even within fixed income and local currency debt, when you are right about choosing the upside, the combination will lead you to a better long-term absolute returns. If you had done that over the last 15 years, over roughly 20 countries, and you were right 60% of the time in a 15-year bear market for emerging markets, you would have lost money in one year because in any given year, if you look at a scatter graph,”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investors don't like unpredictable. So they are starting to look at EM much more closely. You see the flows. Look, the flows are behind the performance too. It's one of the famous reflexivity argument. If you look at EM public markets today and you say, gee, I would love to have a 5 or 10% allocation there. But gosh, how do I do it? Equities has these flaws, fixed income has these issues. The answer is this horizontal approach, which we did in our hedge fund strategies, but haven't done in full long-only strategies yet. If you look at the top 20, 25 liquid investable emerging market countries, think of each of those as a three-body problem. Equities, local currency debt, hard currency fixed income. Each of those countries going through its own cycle. Is it a recovery cycle coming out of a crisis? Is it an inflation cycle? Is it a deflation?”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This year. This will make the ground fertile for this discussion. Now let's shift back to public markets for a second. I look at EM equities. They had this huge rally last year. Korea up 80%. MSCI up 30 plus percent. Should I really be doing a beta trade now? Moreover, if I look at the emerging market equity index, 72% of it is four countries. So am I really helping myself here? Something similar in fixed income, something similar in local currency debt. The answer to me today is we are at an inflection point. Because of the death of U.S. exceptionalism, there's no way around it when the largest economy in the world, the largest country in the world, is behaving the way a lot of us are used to seeing emerging markets behave. It is making it more unpredictable. Let's use the most neutral word we can use.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The industry has shriveled. There is no real global leadership in emerging market private investing. None. It's a terrible thing. How do we fix that? First, you have to recognize that you have to have a global tailwind in any of this stuff. One of the ways we have stayed in business, especially these last 15 years, is by amalgamating other managers under one roof, by acquiring other GPs. Because to grow organically, you need a tailwind. You just do. Now we've got a tailwind. So that's the good news. There is definitely more interest in emerging markets today than there has been in quite some time. The appetite for discussion is greater. The fact that last year, EM liquid markets, writ large had a great year, is forcing people to have an answer to what am I doing in EM?”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Competing with the US leveraged private equity industry. So forget it. Even though you could logically say, no, it should compete with the domestic equity markets, there's a logic to that. Private equity NEM has done better than public equity, but nobody cares, because the allocation is coming.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This issue of single asset class stuff really prevails. Let's take a look at it through a private market lens as a way of example. The world has imposed a developed market private investing construct on emerging markets, which is to say the vast majority of investment vehicles in emerging markets are monoasset class. It's either private equity or its private credit or its interest rate. Many of them are regional or sub-regional. And that is a terrible way to invest in emerging markets. It is a terrible way because the deal flow in emerging markets will not support monoassic class, single country, sub-regional funds, and therefore the people who raise that money end up deploying it badly layer into that 15-year bear market on currencies. You end up with A fragmented market full of failing GPs and two small funds.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To give people what they want full stop. But if you are good enough at it and you develop enough credibility and you're thoughtful enough and patient enough, then you do have some standing to talk to people about doing these things. Thirdly, to your point about Japan, global leadership in EM asset management is an empty space. There is nobody out there who can answer the question for allocators big or small. How much should I invest in emerging markets? In what asset class, in what region, in what style, with whom, and when the firm that can answer and execute against that question with quality? Going to be a great firm. I am targeting that empty space that. Nobody today occupies. And Lord knows we are far from occupying it, but that's the goal.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you balance the concept of giving investors what they want with what you described as your historical experience, say, in Japan, of going somewhere and doing something that other people aren't doing? Because those two things usually don't go together.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Single asset long only capabilities in your skill set so that you can then deploy them when you find the investors who say, I see the logic in what you think I should do here. Let's give it a shot.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Paying all this extra in terms of liquidity and fee for something that is essentially a long only strategy. The penny dropped at that point that we need to shift tactically into long only. That's when we launched our local currency debt strategies and since then have tilted the public markets business. The second thing that it made me realize was an extension of that first bit of philosophy, give investors what they want. Yes, I want to build something that can invest across all the asset classes. Yes, most investors want you to invest in one asset class. So how do you square that circle? You try to do both. But to do both, if you're building a business and if you have to work in this step function of, okay, the business has to pay for itself as we go along here, then along the way you have to give people what they want. And so you have to have those.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he's not. Mostly Ted, what happened was, I started the business in the crisis is when the big lesson came along about tilting into long only, for instance, on the public market side, away from hedge funds and total return strategies. Because even though our hedge funds actually did well in the crisis, we were minus five or six on average across three hedge funds in 2008, which was great. What I noticed was all the money that came back into EM after 08 for the first several years came back into long-only strategies. You could see it in the flow of funds. The reason it did was perfectly logical if you thought about it, which was emerging market hedge funds typically have a huge long bias. They're less liquid, and they have higher fees. That is not logical as an investor.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were a couple of elements to that. One was stubbornness, unwavering belief in the proposition. I remember going to see an unnamed, very famous endowment manager as I was setting up my company. He was very gracious. He had read my deck. He said, I read the whole thing. I don't believe in it. I don't believe in multiple funds. I don't believe in multiple asset classes. I believe in having asset managers who do one thing and one thing only in their entire life is wrapped up in that one thing. That was the prevailing notion. My reply then remains the same, which was A, fine, B, not great for that manager actually to have their life wrapped up in one thing, I would argue. It creates a different level of stress that you, the LP, need to take into account here because you, the LP, are diversified.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of the time an allocator looks at emerging markets, it does fit into one of their silos. Public equity, piece of it's going to be emerging markets or private equity portfolio some spoke is going to be emerging markets. How did you approach the idea that you initially were going to have everything under one umbrella?”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's 20% of global market cap. But if you're managing ten trillion dollars or five trillion or fifteen trillion, I promise you you're not spending five minutes a day thinking about emerging markets. Emerging markets requires a lot of thought. Simple as that.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is much more so yes in a single country than it is globally. There are still decent elements of it at the global level. If you say, I have a smart beta version of equities, a smart beta version of local currency debt, a smart beta version over here. And each of those is better than the benchmark. Now, what do I do about allocating between these three? If it's a very risk-gone global environment, I'm going to allocate more to equities. If it's a very risk-off, I'm going to do more over here. Yes, you can think that way. All of that is doable. You have to be thoughtful about it. And you have to have a partner who can do it. The fact that EM is a niche and remains a niche for all the mega investors investment firms that are out there. Emerging markets is an afterthought. I promise you, it is an afterthought. I don't care what they say. And it always will be because it's small.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If the goal is I want positive exposure to this asset class at a better sharp ratio than the benchmark, it is 100% doable. I'm convinced in every single asset class. And then is there a systematic or at least thoughtful way of thinking about asset class versus asset class and when do you emphasize one versus the other?”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, a smart beta, if you will. Within asset classes, for sure. Let's take local currency debt because we have done exactly that in the past. I mentioned the flaws. If you say, my benchmark is the L me, but I am systematically going to overcome the bond problem by allowing myself to invest in swaps, forwards, and fronts. I am systematically going to get over this uneven duration by drawing a straight line across at the five-year mark. And that's my benchmark because I can always get an interest rate for that, whether it's in the bond market or other market. And I'm going to have a currency overlay of dollar euro yen that is logical for the underlying investment. You can absolutely build something passive that will get you a higher sharp ratio than the underlying index. I have no doubt about that. And I have very little doubt about it, although we haven't done it specifically for the other asset classes. It may have a lower absolute return to which if you then apply some leverage and a higher sharp ratio, you should be fine.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Given the flaws that you see in the various benchmarks across the mark A systematic way that you can approach this benchmark agnostic investing that you think just by structure can allow you to outperform over time.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Behavior. It will be those investors who are smart enough and flexible enough to see that the combination of number of countries, number of underlying markets, number of cycles does not match up well with certainly monoline investing and that that also does not match up well with benchmark based investing who will be able to allocate in such a way as to consistently make money in emerging markets over time.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That, but people are used to it by now. The indices are bigger, they're more diversified. You can still get a huge amount of concentration, as we have seen in S&P returns. The result is not necessarily that different, but I believe that understanding the market structure and the benchmark design, these are two things that are important as investors approach emerging markets. And that's why on the long only side, benchmark agnostic probably makes more sense. Long only total return. Some people may say, oh, that's a hedge fund strategy. Some people might get away charging hedge fund fees for that. It's still a long-only strategy. You have a benchmark of cash or whatever number you want. It's going to be hard to have a benchmark that is an amalgam of an equity benchmark plus a local currency debt benchmark plus a hard currency debt benchmark because then you're dictating”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because the Polish lotty trades against the euro. The Korean won trades against the yen and the dollar. The Ramimbi chain trades against its basket. If you don't take that into account, then a lot of what you are investing in in the Elmi is dollar euro, dollar yen volatility. So that's a problem. On the hard currency debt side, the corporate bonds in emerging markets is a gigantic category of many small issues, not well followed. So it makes it tough on an index because the bid offer is going to be very wide on these things. It's not about the index per se. It's about the underlying market. These are the things that are more particular to emerging markets than they are to develop markets. Obviously, NDM, yes, the S&P is different than the Dow Jones is different than the Russell is, different than this different...”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fraz and government bonds. The non government bond part of the fixed income market in emerging markets is multiples in size of the bond market. Secondly, when that index is built because it's government bonds, they logically for each country pick the part of the curve that is the most liquid part of the curve in that country. That is not the same in every country. So you are buying a duration that is all over the place based on each individual country. Thirdly, it's a dollar-based index. Two-thirds of those government bonds are outside of the dollar zone. They're in the eurozone or the end zone. If you are buying a Polish zotty government bond, your return is benchmarked against the dollar. A lot of your return is dollar euro volatility.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make up 70 plus percent of that index. So you are actually buying a very concentrated exposure, not a very diversified exposure. So that's a problem with the equity indices. Second, in fixed income, if you look at one of the benchmarks, so there are two benchmarks that are the prevalent ones. The MBSMB are the hard currency ones. And then GBIEM is the outgrowth of what was called the ELMI, the emerging local market index. This is the government bond index for local markets in emerging markets. This local currency denominated government bonds. What is the problem with that benchmark if you invest in it? There are several. First, it's government bonds, and the fixed income market is much larger than government bonds. Fixed income market writ broadly swaps forwards.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First thing is the benchmarks. The world is used to benchmark based long-only investing. Investors are used to it because it's easy. The allocator has taken most of the decision-making out of your hands. They've told you, I want you to invest in emerging market equities. I'm going to judge you against this benchmark. You have to be this close to this benchmark. Here's your tracking allowance. Fantastic. This is the way the world has grown up. In emerging markets, different benchmarks have different problems. Keep in mind that I was responsible for building the first bond benchmark in emerging markets. It was called the emerging market bond index, MB. I did that at the time at JP in order to help grow the pie because of this exact point. People needed a benchmark. So, okay, let's build a benchmark. Now, if you look at equities, the MSCI global, Korea, China, India, Brazil.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hey, I want the Asia version of what you did. Hey, I see you're doing inflation linked bonds. I want a fund dedicated to that. Hey, I see that. Lo and behold, 2008, plans working perfectly. We were five funds, three billion dollars. Three of those funds were absolute return hedge funds. Two of them were long-only liquid and illiquid product funds in, I don't know, five, six offices around the world. So that's where we were.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I knew we were going to tailor it to institutional investors because I come out of JP Morgan. I know nothing else. I knew the dedication to EM was going to be the big calling card. That was the thesis. Build an infrastructure that institutional investors will be interested in. Start your first fund with enough capabilities so that you can then spin out different parts as different investors talk to you about them. And that's exactly what happened. The only fund we ever launched was the first one. It was called the Global Opportunity Fund. We launched it in March of 2003. And it was a kitchen sink, what today you would call the multistrat. We did some equities, we did some MFX, we did some fixed income. We even had a dedicated side pocket to illiquid investing strategies. From there, within four years, we had four new funds based on clients looking at what we were doing and saying,”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are two ways to build an asset manager. One is you say, look, this is my activity, this is what I do. I'm a value investor, I'm a momentum investor, I'm a quantum investor, I'm a this, I'm that. Those of you who are interested in this, please come and talk to me. The other way is to say, look, I have these investment capabilities. How can I create a solution for you out of those investment capabilities? In a way, that's what the large asset managers do. It's a supermarket. Do you want a diet version? Do you want a full calorie version? You want the low carb version, the vegan version. We've got it all. And people poo-poo the latter. It's not true investment kind of thing. But if you want to build a big firm that is going to outlast you, I was and remain convinced that's what you have to do. I knew I was going to build a solution-oriented firm that was going to work overtime backwards from what investors told us.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not a subsidiary of equities or of anything else. It was its own thing. And I believe that to be the way to attack emerging markets. I knew that in a big organization which had these big silos, that silo inertia was a threat. Had I left JP to go to XYZ big institution to build the emerging markets business there, buy side or sell side. The silos would be attacking. Even if the silos did nothing in emerging markets, they wouldn't give it up. So the only way I was going to be able to do what I love to do the most was to build it from scratch, to dedicate it to emerging markets from scratch, to legislate away anything else, and to go to the buy side instead of the sell side, because capital requirements fewer barriers.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there was when we announced the merger with Chase typical corporate merger story, tons of overlapping emerging markets. We were number one. They were number two. Tons of overlap in dot-com. They had Chase.com. We had Lab Morgan, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Just too much overlap. The management committee went from a dozen people to 50 people. The culture of the firm logically became dominated by the chase culture, not the JPMorgan culture. So after a year was pretty clear, okay, this is not where I'm going to spend the next 10, 20 years. I had said to myself, if I don't make it all the way at JP, I will go back to my first love, which is emerging markets. One of the things I had known about emerging markets is emerging markets is a horizontal activity. I had built it at JPEAP as a horizontal stand-alone activity. It was not a fixed income subsidiary.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Content fantastic reputation and limited reach because we were such an institutional firm. So couldn't we use dot-com to change that equation? So I volunteered again. I said, look, I will give up this fancy seat I have, but let me build our dot-com strategy and our fintech accelerator, which I then did. I built something called Lab Morgan. It was a fintech accelerator. I can recite to you my three fantastic successes against my, I cannot remember the 97 misses we had there.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After building the emerging markets business from 88 when I took it over, it was eight people. By 95, we were 600 people in 15 countries around the world. We were number one in virtually every category of capital markets. My reward for that was I was put on the executive committee of the bank. I was in charge of currency trading and commodity trading. Later, I was co-head of global markets. These were all big jobs. They were operating committee of the bank, executive committee of the bank. possible succession seats need around 98.99 we were coming into the dot-com revolution i liked the job i had co-head of global markets but the only thing i ever really loved was emerging markets is the simple truth at the same time here comes along this dot-com revolution which seems interesting when i thought about jp morgan i thought about a firm that had fantastic”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stable country. Is it an equity led market this year in that country? Is it an interest rate-led market in that country this year? There are so many combinations within emerging markets. So you have a need to look at it, but then when you look at it, this tremendous rainbow of different opportunity sets that you have to judge. A target-rich environment promoted by the fact that U.S. hegemony in terms of being a magnet for capital is over.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As what is happening in the world. And in fact, what is happening in the world is making what is happening in the countries more important. By that I mean that this phenomenon of the last decade and a half in which capital has so enormously concentrated its flow into the United States at the expense of every other geography has not reversed itself by any stretch, but has diminished the questions that are arising particularly in non-dollar-based investment jurisdictions about where to go invest is absolutely leading people to look at emerging markets much more. At the same time in emerging markets, you have so many countries, so much variety of where a country is in its cycle. Is it a recovering country? Is it a”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two things are the most important, and they're going to sound contradictory. One is you can't ignore the world, and two is you can't ignore what's going on in a given country. There was a long period of time. 2010 to 2024, when what was happening in the world in terms of interest rates and the US dollar was so important that it overwhelmed what was happening in a lot of countries. Prior to that, call it 2002 to 2011, 2010, what was happening in the countries tended to be more important than what was happening in the world. It is this ebb and flow between these cross currents that is the most important thing to understand. When is one prevalent versus the other? That is very relevant because today what is happening in the country is at least as important.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mentality to what was a loan swapping over the counter idea and marketplace. And I brought a different credibility in that my two bosses there knew me and gave me a lot of rope. They let me really aggressively build out the business from this loan swapping business into a proper capital markets underwriting sales, trading, research derivatives, proprietary business. Just as our leadership with that deal led to the Brady plan, Brady bonds led to the explosion in capital markets in emerging markets. It was a beautiful, lucky confluence of events that as the market exploded, I was allowed to build the business as aggressively as I could. And that's exactly what I did.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The person who fixes problems with many dollars involved gets paid well and is doing well. JP Morgan should be very well positioned for this because we were one of the biggest indicators of these Latin American loans. So I picked up the phone and called the head of HR. It turned out there was a small group in New York in the bank that was swapping these defaulted loans of various almost entirely Latin American borrowers amongst mostly banks. This was really portfolio optimization for banks. I'll give you two Brazils. You give me an Ecuador and a Panama. Eight people, they were doing about $800 million worth of volume per year. It was a nascent market. I think we were number three or number four in the world doing that. It was a big step down from running 50 people in Japan. But I grabbed it. I brought a capital markets structure.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The rest of my life career wise, which was because I had been trying to figure out how am I going to manage these two strains of do good. My dad did good in a lot of ways. My grandfather dedicated his entire life to doing good. My mom was a simultaneous interpreter at the UN in the first class of simultaneous interpreters in the 50s. International ran through and through, but how to combine doing good with doing well. The penny dropped when I read about that deal that here is something that is clearly good. There is a problem there that needs to be fixed. The problem is a deep problem, which is what we call at the time LDC finance, less developed country finance. There are many dollars involved”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just getting again a little too comfortable. I started more intentionally looking around for what should I do next. One of the lessons I took from that was to be responsible for my own career path, not just let my boss be the one responsible for my career path. I noticed in early mid-88, Morgan did the first voluntary loan for debt exchange in emerging markets. It was called the Morgan-Mexico bonds. It was a voluntary exchange of loans held by banks into new securities, bonds whose principal or interest, depending on which choice you took, were then guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury. If it was principal, it was by zero coupon bond treasury just a guarantee. They were called par bonds and discount bonds. You want your interest guaranteed, take the discount. You want your principal guarantee. Take your par bond. When I saw that, the penny drop Ted for...”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I ended up spending four years in a succession of extensions. I was initially sent for three months. I said, I like it here. This is really interesting. I worked incredibly hard in Japan, typically arrive at five in the morning, leave around midnight. I would call my old boss who sat in front of the guy running the group at noon New York time just so the guy running the group would hear my old boss say, what are you doing still working at midnight? I got about 10 years of experience in four years of work. And that was really formative. I was managing 50 people at the age of 28. I was dealing with large clients with large amounts of money, a big P&L, very few people my age at that time were doing that. And it was because I had gone where nobody else went. So it taught me that. Opportunity lies where other people aren't. Towards the end, I started noticing that I was.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gorgeous highways that you see today. None of that. It was still getting there. Everybody spoke English but haltingly. It was great fun. Be a bachelor at the age of twenty four in Asia on an expat salary in your expat apartment. That's a pretty good gig.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was a time of internationalization of Japan. This was a bubble time in Japan. Tons of capital, looking for homes, looking for yield. Big intelligent institutions, maybe not the most sophisticated internationally day-to-day, but smart capable people. It was a big business to help them invest their capital in overseas bonds, in different currencies. They were a big provider of capital to corporates and mostly sovereigns and quasi-sovereigns around the world. It was an exhilarating time. It was also a time where the foreign community really showed up in Japan. It was comfortable there. It was interesting also because Japan itself, even early 80s, mid-80s, still almost had a post-war feel to it. The architecture was not the gleaming new infrastructure.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That first day when I learned of his departure, I tracked him down in the hallway and I said, make sure they don't ask me. And as I thought about it overnight, I came to the exact opposite conclusion. I was 24. I was comfortable in New York where I grew up. My friends, I had never been to Asia. I needed to get out of my comfort zone and I needed to get international again. I needed to travel the less trodden path. And that meant going to Japan. So they sent me to Japan initially for three months. I ended up staying for four years. We built the business over there from the initial four or five people to about 100 people. We had a full franchise, full security subsidiary over there by the time I left.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we were starting to work on interest rate swaps and currency swaps. That was the year they were first executed, 83. I started running these programs to analyze exposures on interest rate swaps and currency swaps. And in fact, I'm proud to say I executed the first interest rate swap ever at JPMorgan in 1983. A couple of years later, one of my predecessors in that capital... Came back to New York to resign. I looked around the room and I realized oh my God, they're going to ask me.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An eight month academic training program, which meant I would never have to go to business school. One of my goals coming out of college was never to go to school again. So I grabbed the job, showed up in July of 82 at JP Morgan in the training program. My first rotation out of the training program was in what they called the personnel department. That taught me a lot about the bank. From there, I went into their fledgling capital markets group. This is 1982. The banks had just gotten some relief from Glass-Steagall. They were starting to get into capital markets, underwriting, what have you. At JP, that was a subsidiary called Morgan Guarantee Limited out of London and a sister group in New York that did capital markets. Since I had taken exactly one computer science course at Brown, I was assigned the job of working on one of the two PCs in all of JP Morgan in 1982 on the floppy disks.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Poster child for downward mobility. I was raised in not the kind of luxury people live in today, but a Park Avenue apartment. Country house, that kind of thing. I had no idea if I would be able to replicate that lifestyle. As I went through college, I'd spent a ton of time thinking about my value set and what I wanted to do with my life. I came to conclusions that made me comfortable with the downward mobility thing. I knew from a couple of summer internships that I had taken. One was at Unilever in London that I had a knack for financial numbers, nothing too fancy, just a knack for it. Coming out of college, I applied to the usual constituency of things people applied to then, which was mostly consulting firms and banks. Morgan Guarantee Trust Company offered me a job in, it must have been February of 1982. They were the first to offer me the job, which meant two things. The sooner I took the job, the sooner I could stop studying. And their job entailed”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had covered the League of Nations in Geneva and became convinced that the best path forward for mankind was a political and economic union of the Atlantic democracies. So he wrote a book called Union Now in 1939, devoted the rest of his life to promoting this idea, made a big splash. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of times, all of which is to say I have an international background. I have a strong streak of idealism on one side of the family, a strong streak of practical banking type stuff on the other side, combined with civic participation. I was raised here in New York bilingually. I was always interested in Things International. From there, I went to Brown. At Brown, I did a lot of my formative thinking, which got me to where I am today. First of all, Ted, I was convinced at Brown that I was going to be the”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. I was born here in New York. Both parents originally from overseas, my father, a European immigrant, arrived in New York at the age of 16. His travel from Nazi Europe took him from Vienna where he was born to Romania to Paris to Lisbon to Casablanca to Rio, where he lived for two years. The path cleared by a Brazilian diplomat who was the Brazilian equivalent of Schindler. His name was Susa Dantes, who wrote out 800 visas for European Jews against the express policy of his own government. My father was one of those. Then from there to Middlebury. As a European, he ended up at Lazard Frere, European Investment Bank. My mom, born and raised in Geneva of a French mother and American father, he was the international correspondent for the New York Times.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This issue of single asset class stuff really prevails. Let's take a look at it through a private market lens as a way of example. The world has imposed a developed market private investing construct on emerging markets, which is to say the vast majority of investment vehicles in emerging markets are monoasset class. It's either private equity or it's private credit or its infrastructure. Many of them are regional or sub-regional. And that is a terrible way to invest in emerging markets. It is a terrible way because the deal flow in emerging markets will not support monoassic class, single country, sub-regional funds, and therefore the people who raise that money end up deploying it badly layer into that a 15-year bear market on currencies. You end up with a fragmented market full of failing GPs.”
2026-01-22 · Capital Allocators · Nick Rohatyn – Emerging Markets Multi-Asset Investing at TRG (EP.482) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source