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Scott Wilson

lines on the record: 81
first: 2025-07-21
most recent: 2025-07-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“We also understand the process, we understand their portfolio, and we have the ability to assess when things are going poorly, whether it's a short term or long-term problem. And I would say most of our partners we've been able to produce significantly better returns than you would think just looking at their headline numbers, because we have the conviction to kind of add capital when things aren't going that well and can rebalance when things are going well.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just hugely selective, and I guess you have to be humble and intellectually honest about your ability to really choose the absolute best performing managers. There's a large number of problem in that, let's say 95% of the time we can tell a really good manager from a really bad manager. But if only 1% of them are actually really good, then you still end up with five to one ratio of not so good managers with good managers. Right now, I'd say we only have four, what you'd call traditional hedge funds in the whole portfolio. And then we're also looking for places where we can leverage that relationship to make the overall portfolio better. So we're looking for people we can kind of use as either outsourced research partners, places where we can add capital. And we think they have a really interesting idea that, again, is kind of idiosyncratic to everything else we have in the portfolio. That's a really valuable relationship for us. And I would say the”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An aggregate level, it's easy to make the case that it never makes any sense, but you're not really dealing the aggregate level. You're dealing with the subset of managers that you inherited when you showed up, and maybe a few that you liked from before. So how do you put together that kind of bearish macro perspective, say on long short, with bottom-up manager by manager decisions?”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And hedge funds in general. And I think you can look at it like an industry-wide returns. It struggles because the proliferation of just the number of hedge funds on a look-through basis, that's kind of what the industry owns, right? They own both sides of the market. It's really tough with that fee structure to produce alpha.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Portfolio has to make sense on a look through basis. So if you take our hedge fund portfolio three years ago and I were to evaluate it and I'll look through basis, I'd say we own 2,000 names on the both sides of the market and we have a fee structure that's one and a half and twenty. That's a portfolio construction problem, right? Because essentially you're an index fund on both sides of the market with an expensive active management fee structure on top of it. And the fee structure is problematic in that it guarantees you always do worse than the average, right? So you're essentially law in correlation. If you have a hedge fund that's up 10% and a hedge fund that's down 10% on a gross basis, you're flat, right? But you paid them both one and a half percent-ish as a management fee. And then the one that was up 10%, you also paid a 15, 20% carry to. So on a gross basis, you're flat, but after you put on your fee structure, you've done horribly. And that's probably.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The same lens that we look through all managers. I mean, first and foremost, we're looking for people we think are great investors, people who are operating in an interesting opportunity set, people we think have a institutionalized, repeatable process. Ultimately, we evaluate them based on what we think the quality of their portfolio is. And we think about our portfolio on a bottoms-up basis and that we own what our partners own in some fraction. So if we're they own 10 stocks and we're 10% of the fund, we think about our portfolio as these individual pieces. And then we have a fee and liquidity structure on top of that.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's kind of very high level things we tend to like smaller managers. We tend to like people who concentrate, we like people who have a long-term view. We typically stay away from systematic and macro generally those are the things that we have a harder time getting over the hump. So we were able to eliminate quite a few of those relationships and those partners just right off the top. And then it became like, how do we re-underwrite this manager if you start with a blank slate, is this somebody we would put in the portfolio? The answer was no, then we would look to terminate over time.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“70, 80 percent of the original pool, even more than 80% actually. So the vast majority of it's been turned over and those we've kept, we've added capital to and concentrated exposures. But for the most part, it's a very, very different looking portfolio than it was when I started three years ago.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We certainly were not popular in certain circles for quite some time, probably still not Those are tough decisions. Those partners didn't necessarily fit our portfolio. I mean, these are smart, thoughtful, well intentioned, good people, and often great investors. It's just, it didn't fit what we were trying to do with the portfolio. And so we had to make a lot of tough decisions at the margins. I would say like we went through with the board and garnered internal support, but we put in redemptions for almost half the portfolio in the first several weeks. Now I was fortunate to have the portfolio for several months before I actually landed in the seat. So we spent a lot of time going over individual partners and individual names of who we were going to keep in the portfolio and who we weren't. But this point, I think we've probably turned over.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had a very traditional kind of endowment asset allocation. If you think top down, we haven't shifted the asset allocation too meaningfully. We've reduced exposure to the hedge funds. I think we've gone from 100 partners plus to 50 that matter or really 30 that matter. So we've concentrated our exposures and then we have a significant portion of the portfolio in individual securities and individual names”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We went from 10 to 15, the bulk of that came in from international partners, particularly in kind of emerging frontier markets. I like to think here at Washu, we're completely opportunistic. We're more or less indifferent between domestic, international, public, private, where we can find interesting partners, interesting opportunities, interesting places to put capital, particularly when we think it reduces the risk profile of the overall portfolio. We're always looking for something that we think is orthogonal or idiosyncratic to what we currently have in the portfolio. And that's where we like to kind of concentrate our exposures.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This world where ostensibly all of your peers have completely different looking portfolios, global diversification, equities, credit, real assets. How did you think about sticking to effectively concentration in predominantly U.S. equities?”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, look, I think pretty similar. We had gone from, say, 10 managers who mattered to probably 15. And then we'd also done quite a few individual co-investments either in public markets or private markets that changed the risk profile of the portfolio quite substantially.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I first got there, there was still legacy concentrated exposure to large cap domestic equities and certainly the mandate form of the board was the college had grown more dependent on the endowment and wanted to reduce overall volatility. So there was a mandate to diversify to some extent while still kind of maintaining the core beliefs and tenets that had grown the endowment over that same time period.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was definitely hey, let's find great individual companies, great partners. And see if we can leverage those relationships to put concentrated exposure into individual positions that we can compound with over really long periods of time. So if you look at the biggest investments in Grinnell's history, it wasn't uncommon for them to have north of 10% of the portfolio in a single individual name. Particularly when Joe was there, they had a historical relationship with Buffett and Sequoia, the mutual fund. If Joe liked it and Warren liked it and Sequoia, they could potentially own it in the internal portfolio and both places. So you'd end up with these large concentrated exposures, but produced just unbelievable returns over many, many decades. I think when Joe started, the endowment was just a couple million dollars in 1940s and was over a billion dollars almost completely through capital gains over that timeframe. I think over that time frame, they only took in $70 million in gifts and turned $3 million into...”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way to Joe did, and it was really good for me because I had no idea really what they did in an endowment when I first started. And I guess my role technically was director of public investments. And then quickly took over as managing privates and publics and then ultimately became the CIO in my fourth year there. But it was a great place to start. And David, still a great mentor.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's probably most famous because of the connection with Buffett. Buffett hasn't been active since the late 70s, early 80s, but certainly was instrumental. And there's a famous investor, I think Money Magazine wrote him up as the most famous investor you'd never heard of. And that was Joe Rosenfield. And he had a huge role in the endowment from 1941 until 2000. And then David Clay, the CIO who hired me, he started in the 80s as well and worked with Joe and was really super instrumental in that portfolio over basically a 30-year period and super talented investor and just a wonderful human being. And I was so lucky to start there and work under David for that seven years I was there. He was just following more of that kind of Berkshire style investing than the traditional Yale model. David just was a really great investor. I think looked at the world in a very similar way.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And certainly new people who worked in the investment office, and that's how they got my number, but they wanted someone who had kind of international experience, experience in fixed income, experience in equities. And so my background kind of loosely fit there. And obviously I tied to Grnell College as well. And the truth is my kids were starting school and we had started the kind of private school thing in Tokyo. And my wife is originally from the Midwest. She's from small town Iowa, actually. And it just worked out for the family. And I thought the job was super interesting. Certainly the compensation scales are very different running a derivative trading desk in an investment bank versus working at a smaller endowment. So that was kind of a big life decision and it just seemed like something, hey, this is super interesting. It's more meaningful and it ended up being a great decision in hindsight.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like, do you have the right number? I don't even know what you guys do. It was only conceptually aware of endowments because of Grinnell was kind of famous for being this little tiny college in the middle of Iowa.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Running the fixed income, mostly like interest rate derivatives, swaps, swap shins, caps floors in Tokyo and then got transferred to London during the financial crisis to take over the euro, sterling, and Swissy books there. And then after the merger with B of A and Merrill ultimately went back to Barclays in Japan before I got a call from Grinnell College to talk about coming to work for an endowment. So like very circuitous kind of random route. I mean, I guess there are links in the chain where you can point to where it was kind of logical at the time, but certainly didn't grow up in this kind of allocator world or even in asset management.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was fortunate enough to be at a stage in my career. I was given the choice hey, you can go back to business school. I had a guarantee when I went over and they were going to potentially move me to New York and find a spot for me, but it was easy enough for me to go back to grad school. So I applied to a couple different grad schools, but ultimately chose the financial mathematics program at University of Chicago and was going to go to school full-time and try and work part-time, but got an offer from Bank of America to be a quant in the strategy group there that was mostly focused on fixed income derivatives, some FX, some of the exotics, but I ended up going to school part-time and working full-time. And that was kind of a great financial decision. But I worked there for just maybe it was a year and a half, 18 months before they shipped me off to the Tokyo office and landed in Tokyo as a junior trader on the derivatives desk and worked my way up. So I was.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started at CSFB, had the opportunity to go to Merrill at the end of my two year program to be a senior equity research analyst. So I moved out to Merrill in the tech group in San Francisco. I guess they called it the Global Growth Group and was there during the whole implosion of the tech bubble.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was fortunate there was a guy who was number one I ranked research analyst and his name was Greg Capelli just super smart thoughtful guy and I was earmarked to go into his group immediately so I was just the junior person on the totem pole doing equity research like basic financial models and basic due diligence on companies that we were either trying to take public trying to raise money for or just traditional equity research analysis”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was all kinds of interesting people to learn, and you just had a huge, huge array of resources. And when you're 2021 years old, you're just a sponge for that kind of stuff. So it was really a great experience. I mean, it's a lot of hours, like those analyst programs that the investment banks are. I don't think they're as bad as they used to be, but it's labor intensive. And you see a lot of attrition throughout the ranks, like even over two, three years. I just really enjoyed it. It was a great experience.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not having a traditional, like my undergrad major, it was a double major in math and economics. It was surprisingly less quantitative than I thought the investing world would be, but also just super interesting. I've been super fortunate to have great people to work with and great mentors throughout my career. And those early experiences were just wonderful learning opportunities. When I first started at First Boston, Michael Mobison was an equity researcher. Maybe he was product manager or something by the time I started there.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was graduating from college. I was fortunate in that this was peak of the internet bubble and it was easier for kids from places like Grinnell to insert their foot into the recruiting process. Interviewed a bunch of the investment banks and consulting firms and ultimately ended up at First Boston and equity research group there. And that same friend actually the one who helped me get my foot in the door there as well.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was fortunate, really close friend of mine who was two years ahead of me that went off to be very successful in the financial world. He kind of took me under his wing, I guess, and he was dead set on going into investment banking and finance, even when I think he was a freshman in college. And I had no idea what investment banking was. I was good at math and science. And so thought I wanted to be an engineer. And if you grow up in small town Alaska, that's the guy who has the big house at the end of the street. And so that's what I thought I wanted to do. And my skill set was well suited for. And then the more I learned about investment banking and finance, the more interest that I became. And I guess after my sophomore year, I got an internship at Payne Weber, basically a retail brokerage house that doesn't exist anymore, but learned quite a bit about finance in the stock market in general. And then the following summer got an internship at a kind of a real asset management firm.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure I was that forward thinking at the time. To be honest, I grew up in very small rural Alaska and didn't have any clue. I thought I wanted to be an engineer when I went to school. And that's obviously not the path I took, but I remember my first foray into the financial world was until I was really a sophomore in college. It was through the people I met at Grinnell that kind of opened my eyes to the financial world. Neither of my parents went to college and I really just had no idea of that whole whether it was investment banking or asset management. I had no real concept at the time.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was certainly different at the time, and to be honest, it's a hard system to learn, and it doesn't come natural, you know, if I look at the way my high school and kind of AU basketball coach taught basketball was, you know, motion offense, work hard, get great shots, try and set yourself up for opportunity, where hero is like take that first initial shot, hopefully within six, eight seconds of taking possession of the ball and you're better off taking a quick three than particularly like the way we offensive would crash the offensive boards, you get a lot more of those kind of long rebounds on the offensive side than you do on the defensive side and kick it back out for another quick three. It was very different. And I think that the team approach certainly resonated in that every player had like specific responsibilities. We had designated shooters and some really great players while I was there, but a different style of basketball. And you've seen it become more of the norm.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Style, and the coach, I think, was very progressive at the time in terms of just understanding the power of this kind of three for two relationship. And we led the country all four years while I was there. And it was just a great experience all around. And we definitely had some success there. We won conference one year, but we were usually in the hunt for it. And if you're a shooter, I play point guard and shooting guard, mostly shooting guard while I was there. The point guard experiment was pretty unsuccessful from what I remember. But overall, great experience.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enjoy my conversations with Andy Golden all the way back to episode 13 in 2017 and Scott Wilson from 2020. Scott, thanks so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. I think we should go all the way back to your college experience. And before we get into any thoughts about investing, love to hear about your basketball experience at Cornell. Yeah. Okay. I grew up in maybe to start with the very beginning. I grew up in a small town Alaska and me and my younger brother, both big basketball fans. And I was an okay high school basketball player, like good for the state of Alaska, which is kind of a small basketball state, though we did have some great players who went on to play, particularly at Duke. I was recruited by a small handful of schools and had a couple partial scholarship offers and some full scholarship offers like junior colleges and stuff. But ultimately decided I was going to go to college for academics and not just basketball, but was recruited to play basketball at Grinnell College and met some great people there who have actually quite a few of them went off into the financial.”
2025-07-21 · Capital Allocators · CIO Greatest Hits: Endowments – Scott Wilson (WashU) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source