YouSaid · the spoken record

Tara Alhadeff

lines on the record: 48
first: 2022-08-05
most recent: 2022-08-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Mostly, I'm reading David Williams' books to my eight year old son, only British people, I think, will know what David Williams is, but he and I are reading those together for the most part. And then actually literally before this Zoom, I opened up an Amazon package of what I'm going to read next, which is a book by Adam Grant. Adam Grant, think again. Yep. Social psychologist, so I'm excited about that because it says the power of knowing what you don't know, which is what I really like to read about.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, and then the other one I'd say, sorry if I can, I know it's meant to be a lightning round, I'm not doing lightning. Sorry, one more thing I want to say on investment advice. Nobody has the right answer. Gather the inputs, listen to the advice, but do not fall into the trap of thinking that someone more senior or more experienced or more loud or more confident than you knows better. They might. So listen to them, but then go away and think about it and make your own mind up when you're young and early in your career it's very easy to just think people who are more experienced definitely have the right answer and it's just not true because then you get to be at the top and you realize yikes i don't have all the answers so i wish i'd known that earlier”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't be linear. I think human beings, despite their best intentions, have a natural instinct to be linear, upwards or downwards. So when things are going well, when a company's growing, they model like more and more growth. And when things are difficult or declining or margins are declining, they just like model that out forever and being overly simplistic. But I think people tend to attribute too high probabilities to things continuing as they are. And nobody can see around corners. And obviously, I'm not saying you can magic up a crystal ball, but I just think intellectually as an investor, imagining the disconnects and really making sure you're pricing in the unexpected, even if it's as low probability is on the intellectual side of investing, the thing I feel no one ever really explained to me and you just had learned by doing. And I think, yeah, that's something I tried to tell people much earlier in their career.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But ask yourself what's changed? Have I learned more? Like, maybe the upside's even greater than I think. And the reason I say that is we could have sold that company, I don't know, for seven or eight hundred million euros at some point and we would have made three times our money, which is a very respectable, great return. And if we just looked at our original investment case, we definitely would have sold early, but we had to update our thinking and say, actually, this thing could be way bigger than what we originally thought. And so we should hold on and stay invested for much, much longer. So yeah, dream a little bit and dare to be brave sometimes.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This very simple thing like going against pushing water uphill is like very difficult thing to do. And I think it's an important investing lesson because we often sit in meeting rooms and with Excel spreadsheets and create investment thesises and that are really smart and we're going to do something different and we've got a management team say they're going to do this different, just reality check sometimes if it's a mature business in a flat or stable or declining category it probably wouldn't bet against that or it's very hard work let's say and then lessons from stuff that's gone really well so dot martins you already talked about that for a minute that's been a fantastic investment for us over eight nine years now and still going strong don't be afraid to imagine really outlandish upside scenarios that's a reverse to the first lesson which is about when to be cautious but it's possible update your thinking and when something's going well it doesn't mean it'll continue going well”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sarah, I'll share two in opposite directions. So the group was called Igloo, and it solves frozen food. And the investment went well, just to be honest about that. But the lesson I was going to say is growing a mature business in a flat category is an unbelievably difficult thing to do. It's like pushing water uphill. And as I said, the investment was a good one for us because of how cash generative that business was, but it really stuck with me, the lived experience of no matter how.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My first investment was in a company called Findus Italy, which was a frozen food fish finger, fish sticks, I think they're called in the US, right? Bird's eye. So we owned the Bird's Eye Fish Sticks, Fish Fingers brand, and we acquired this big Italian equivalent to merge it. It was an 800 million euro deal in 2011 or 10 or something. That was my first deal.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I think that undertone is still there. And so my advice is find a place, a firm and people, a team and firm where you can really be your authentic self. Almost any company will say the right things and almost any team will say the right things about diversity today. And by the way, almost any company will have lots of good initiatives and actions and good answers to what they're doing about it. All of that's great, but I think you will know through interview processes or internships or at least in your first few years of working a job, whether you can really be your authentic self with that group of people. And I think nothing trumps that. And if you're wasting half your brain trying to be something that you're not going to be your best self and you're not going to be happy and you're not going to do the best job you can do on an individual level as opposed to on an organizational level, that's that would be my advice.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's sad to me that we have to still talk about this. Like, I definitely am, I know a lot of women say this, but I'm in that group of people who thought when I was starting my career, I definitely thought that at this point we wouldn't be talking about it, but you're totally right, the private equity industry definitely has a diversity problem. And I think there's a ton of good intentions out there now, but actually doing something about it and changing it and getting the next generation of women into senior leadership positions so that they can be mentors and role models for the next generation, creating the virtuous cycle is going to take years still and is really challenging. And I also think it's important to be honest, this is not much said, but I do think there's still unfortunately people out there who silently mostly think things like, this isn't a great industry for women and maybe the same for banking. I don't know. And that's a quite quiet voice because it's clearly not very politically correct to speak like that today.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And businesses going from zero to 200 million of sales or 200 to a billion in a couple of years. And that was just unheard of before. So in terms of capturing upside and growing businesses, I think it's good news for us and what we're trying to do”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Technological disruption is basically good news for how we think about investing in brands and has been for five, ten years probably by now. What I mean by that is technological disruption is giving great brands new channels to sell through. And most importantly, it enables a brand or a business to reach basically the whole world in a matter of either months or years or minutes if you do it through a TikTok video. You can achieve things that would have taken decades before in much, much shorter time frames. So the ability of a brand to grow fast is basically greater today than it was 10 years ago because of technological disruption. That doesn't mean all brands will grow faster. Of course not. I think on average brands will probably grow the same kind of going forward as they have historically, but the winners and the ones who really understand how to take advantage of technological disruption, I think can just leap forward.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the important psychological elements of this is that we can be looking at multiples that are substantially down on last year or last three years. And so we've got people in the team or people in the market thinking that's really good value because you're looking at this company that's, I don't know, 12 times EBITDA instead of 17 that it would have been last year. But then you've got, thankfully, just like the conversation you're saying, a lot of people in the firm and in the industry can say 12 is still really high for that company if you actually take a 40 year view. So it's a difficult moment to value businesses.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We actually talked about it internally with Rich Friedman, who has run our merchant banking business for decades. We were talking about the last time that interest rates were where they are, where senior secured debt can cost you 11.5%. And that was literally in the late 80s. And the difference is multiples were half of what they are now. So it was just simple math, literally. It's a very interesting analysis when you go back and look at interest rate environments that were equal to where we are today and what multiples were. And I think it's very instructive. And I agree with you in terms of what we're going to see over the next 12 months. And there just has to be a balance given the math.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're not literally marking everything to market every minute and needing to follow public market valuations mechanically, but it certainly feels like a moment of disconnect.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you look back at history, that's typical, so private market valuations have a lag. And so we're not surprised by that. But we definitely have this dynamic where sellers tend to think their company is worth X and buyers think it's worth Y, which is less than X. And that's going to take, I don't know, probably at least a year to really work through the average of the next five years valuation level multiples is probably going to be lower than the average of the last five years, just given the difference in the interest rate environment. So that's why I think investment activity for firms like ours will likely be lower in the next 12 months than last year just because we're not going to, we need to wait for this disconnect to work its way through. It's important to stay disciplined, obviously. So we're being thoughtful and cautious about valuations. It doesn't mean we're trying to buy cheap or call the bottom or anything like that because ultimately in our firm, our strategy is very focused on buying quality and we're willing to pay up for quality and we've got a long term.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an easy, affordable treat that makes you feel good, and you probably cut some much bigger items and you can still afford your $15, or you can even trade up and buy a more luxurious lipstick, buy a Chanel lipstick, you get a feel-good factor. So really, I think it's very nuanced, the answer to your question. And we're not trying as investors to predict with accuracy what the next 18 months or two years will look like for discretionary spending. What we're doing is saying very focused on backing long-term winners that have enough white space to grow through challenging macro and have got robust business models and pricing power, staying power, really, so that even if the next X months or years are tough or even tougher than next.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Higher income consumers will be more robust in the months and probably years to come. And then a more fun element of the answer is that discretionary spending is by definition discretionary. It's optional. You don't need it to live or to survive. But what I always say is that the human desire to feel good is not discretionary. So people want to feel good no matter what. And so of course if you're literally living paycheck to paycheck, you don't have an option about your discretionary spending. But most people aren't living literally paycheck to paycheck. And so people find ways to feel good. And there's a lot of discretionary spending that's about feeling good. And a lot of people will know this, but there's something famous called the lipstick effect that I think one of the l'oreal founding family members identified in some past recession, which is that a $15 lipstick actually does really well during a recession.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that allows you to buy quite a lot more of the small things, but still be net saving. So you get this effect where the small ticket items do better and tend to be more resilient than the big ticket items. And then you get, then of course you have to layer on, when we say consumers, there's high income, low income, different demographics, people living in all different kinds of circumstances. the newspaper headlines i think focus and frankly rightly so on people who are really struggling and living week to week paycheck to paycheck and really struggling under current inflationary circumstances so low income consumers i think unfortunately are going to be hit hard and that will affect their discretionary spending high income consumers have got very robust balance sheets today and their wealth is at all time highs and their confidence levels are reasonably high and so it also depends who you're serving as a brand or a business high income or low income so we think business is serving”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over the last few years, and then COVID, so people didn't spend on their holidays and their restaurants and they're going out and didn't go to weddings and all this, like a lot of big ticket stuff people didn't spend the last few years. So we have, ironically, right now, we have inflation, we have serious pressures on discretionary spending, but we also have pockets of explosive growth in spending where people are catching up on things that they didn't do for the last few years. So it's really difficult to analyze. But the kind of simple conclusions that we've made answered your question are big ticket items versus small ticket items. So we think big ticket items, a new car, a new TV, in the discretionary spending tend to get hit first and small ticket items get consumers tend to protect. And in fact, small ticket items sometimes see a growth because you cut the big spending. Let's say you cut $1,000 by you not buying something very large.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wish I knew Crystal Ball. Look, it's a really complicated question and we had a dedicated team spending a few months on literally that question, discretionary consumer spending, what's going to happen? What are the scenarios for the next, say, two years? And there was a surprising lack of clarity out there. We talked to all the economists, I think, including Goldman Sachs economists, and we gathered a ton of input. We did a ton of data crunching and looked at history. And of course, there isn't an analogy in history for this moment in time as is much discussed. I don't want to be glib about my answer. Like, I think it's a really nuanced question. It's also freakish, a freak event that we're facing this on the back of COVID. So what you have is consumers with all-time high savings rates, government subsidies that have really supported businesses and consumers.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A trend. So you won't find us saying, I just believe that this type of ingredient trend in beauty is here to stay. I just believe it. Everybody believes it. Like everyone in the industry thinks this is something backable. We won't invest like that. If we're not absolutely sure that a brand meets the framework that we've got in-house around staying power, then we won't invest because we're not trying to obviously, but we're very focused on making sure we're not making gut or instinct decisions.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do a ton of analysis about this, and we're really focused on this, as you could imagine. I'm not sure I'm going to list all the detailed analyses we do because without wishing to sound arrogant, that's what we think our IP is. And that's what we spent like 15 years building up how to tell the difference between a fad and something structural here to stay. basically what I'd say is we have a framework of what we think the characteristics and analysis that will prove brands that are really here to stay and that are growing off something structural as opposed to something faddish. And we've really refined that over the years and road tested it on tons of brands that we look at every single year. And we feel really good about having developed that framework. But if we're not sure, we won't invest. We're investors and it's our job to take risk and assess risk. But the type of risk we won't take is a gut feeling about it.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Awesome. You alluded to this earlier, but in the world of brands, there are so many disruptive ones that are scaling quickly through influencers and social media. So how do you distinguish between the brands that, as you mentioned earlier, are here today gone tomorrow from those with staying power”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Silvio Campara, and we were really excited to back the management team. There's just an unbelievable energy in that company. And remember earlier I said that luxury is about creative on the one hand and commercial and them coming together. So Golden Goose totally has the creative and the commercial coming together and humming. And it's quite rare to get both things in one.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You said, to have done that investment, but I'm really glad we did. What attracted us to that brand looks so many things. First of all, it's a sneaker. For people who don't know, it's luxury sneakers. The sneaker phenomenon, casualization, people wanting to be comfy, but looking good at the same time. That was just a theme and a trend that we think is here to stay. Of course, people will still wear stilettos. I'm not saying stilettos are dead, but more people have more sneakers in their wardrobe. So we liked being in sneakers. We liked the fact that it was luxury. So Golden Goose had really pioneered this idea of luxury sneakers. Today all the luxury brands have big sneaker businesses and all of them sell luxury Gucci and Alexander McQueen and so on. But Golden Goose was really one of the first brands to be doing luxury sneakers. So it was a pioneer and it owned its category and we always liked that. And the second thing we loved, a management team, we'd known the company, especially my colleagues in Milan had known the company for many years, had known Silvio, the CEO.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so many things. So, just to tell the story of what you're alluding to, we signed the deal in February 2020, cast your mind back. COVID hadn't come to Europe, or so we thought, and people were saying that it was just China or maybe just Asia. So anyway, we signed the deal in February 2020. And then in March, COVID is discovered in Italy, which is where Golden Goose is headquartered and all the production is in Italy. And all of Italy went into lockdown before the rest of Europe or the US. And so literally less than a month after we sign this big investment in Golden Goose, the world goes into lockdown and our shoes, Golden Goose, are all produced in Italy, which is in complete lockdown. So there was some very stressful weeks and months where we were worried about this investment, but literally within weeks that turned around, consumers started buying online and wholesale customers were selling on their websites and the business just flew and did really well. But yeah, it was an interesting time.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's interesting for us, but where we get very excited is heritage brands that we just think have a lot more potential than what they're achieving today.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Heritage Brands is a term we use, does what it says on the tin, but to describe brands that have tons of heritage, decades and decades of existence, typically multi-generations of consumers would recognize them. There's no magic to how many years you need to have existed for us to call you a heritage brand. But typically multiple generations of people recognize the brand. That's what we mean. And why that matters is that it means those brands have been through multiple fashion cycles, economic cycles. We get very excited when we find heritage brands because they have high brand awareness. They've been around forever, they've stood the test of time. They're probably here to stay. And then we get excited when we think they have not been managed to their full potential. So obviously there's heritage brands that have been managed to their full potential and there's not much for us to do. There's also heritage brands that have been overmanaged and overextended and milked. And that's also not.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, and are really happy shareholders of that company, as you alluded to, we definitely, and as Kenny and the management, Kenny Wilson's the CEO. So Kenny and the management team do a great job of explaining to the market. But I'm not saying anything that's not public, but there's just so much runway for growth in that company. That was a case of being very happy to hold on. We sold half our stake in the IPO and kept half and we were very happy with that.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so look, there are many things that go into that decision clearly. What's our view of the future growth potential of any asset? What are the market conditions and what are our options? I mean, you can't always dictate what your options are. And certainly when you do an IPO, if you own the majority of the company and you're IPOing, it's extremely unlikely that it will be a full exit just for obvious reasons. You're not IPOing 100% of the company. We take into consideration management and what management's desires are as well. And we also ask ourselves Are we the right owner? Sometimes there's very good reasons to think that another owner, usually a strategic one, a corporation, will be able to extract or drive value in a way that we can't necessarily through synergies. For example, and typically we're selling to a strategic buyer, that'll be a full exit. So there's a lot of things that go into that decision. In the case of Dr. Martin's, look, we own 36% of the company.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And under Premier's ownership, the company expanded its global presence, opened new stores, built out the e-commerce offerings. And Premier is still an investor even after the Duck Martins IPO in 2021, which implies that you still see potential for growth. So the question I have is how do you decide when to completely exit an investment versus holding onto it or part of it for future growth?”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And management, it could just be a much bigger business without in any way, shape, or form diluting, damaging, weakening the brand. And that's absolutely key to how the company's been run since we invested.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, sure. Happy to. We invested in Dot Martin's eight years ago now in January 2014. And the original thesis was exactly what you said. We had a brand that was enormous, globally known. Everybody, people of all ages and all walks of life knew what Dot Martin's was. So the brand awareness was huge. The business attached to that brand was very small. It was 200 million pounds of revenue despite, as I said, being sold literally in Argentina, Vietnam, all over the world. And what we saw was that other brands, footwear brands, that had the same brand awareness as Doc Martin's, had billions of revenue attached to them. So we weren't sure if Docs could be literally billions, which now it's well on its way to being. But what we were sure was that this was a brand that was much bigger than the business and that with a different level of strategy and execution.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Crucial management are goes without saying, but the people who really turn that around are the management team led by the CEO Stefano Sassi and theory and strategy is great. And getting those two things to hum in one company is quite hard, but that's the core of what great luxury business is. And I think we understand that now and lots of people understand that, but we really learned that during the Valentino investment.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that deal informed a lot, and we've learned a lot about brand investing from that deal. So a few things to pick out. Firstly, how robust a truly iconic brand can be over time. So global financial crisis or mismanagement, if you've got a truly robust, excellent brand, it can actually survive quite a lot of challenge. That was one thing we learned. Second thing we learned is how long it can take to reposition or improve performance at a brand. I use this phrase, which actually one of my partners used to use the Valley of Death. You often have to go through the Valley of Death to emerge out the other side, and that can take years. And that's where private equity is a great ownership model because you've got years. I know some people say private equity is not long-term, but I think we can really take a many years up to a decade view, and that allows you to reposition a business. And you need that kind of time. The other thing this deal really taught us is how”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Invested. And in the end, global financial crisis happened, and it took longer for that to come through than we had originally expected, but it absolutely did come through.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What attracted the firm and us to them is very relevant today. So Valentino and Hugo Boss both absolutely tick that awareness. Everybody in the world knew those two really. 90% of people in the world knew those two brands and could tell you what they stood for. Men's suits in the case of Hugo Boss and high fashion couture gowns back then for Valentino today. This is 15 years ago, remember. So they both had this kind of like icon status, immediately recognizable real brands. So the simple thing that attracted us to both of them is that they had decades of heritage, been around forever, really stood the test of time, but we felt that they were both brands that were bigger than the businesses that were attached to them and that they had been not managed to their full potential and that bringing new strategies and new management to them would re-help their and more profitable than they were when we”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and how much do people feel emotionally? And it's weird to talk about emotions when you're a financial investor, but how much do people feel that this brand is a part of their lives and means something to them? And the reason we care about that is that all of that basically comes down to pricing power and stickiness. So when people feel emotionally connected to a brand and it can be a footwear brand, it can be a food brand, it can be a baby care brand or a cosmetics brand when people feel really emotionally connected with it, they tend to have lower price elasticity, which obviously is helpful from an investment thesis point of view, and they tend to be much more sticky in their behaviors and repeat much more and be much more loyal customers. So that's what we mean by brand investing. Like we're trying to find the brands that have got that powerful connection with consumers that really sets them apart from their competitors.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so firstly, let me put the answer in context. So, brand investing is one of the two legs of our consumer sector strategy at Pamira. The other leg is that we like to invest in consumer digital companies. So brand investing is what we're talking about now. And you're right, it's a very nebulous term that's difficult to know exactly what we mean and get your arms around. And the reason we chose this term brand investing and the structure we put behind it is the first question we ask ourselves is how strong is the brand of this company with its consumers? Now that means awareness, of course, like how many people know the brand unaided or aided, but it means much more than that after the awareness question. It means how emotionally connected do people feel with this brand? How much a part of their lives is it? How much do they recommend it? How much do they love it? How much do they feel it represents them?”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want to talk about brand strategy because today you're responsible for brand strategy in the consumer space at Pramira. And how do you as an investor put structure and frameworks around a brand, which is something that people tend to view as qualitative and non-financial? And there were many years where people in your industry did not want to invest in brands.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be to unwind decisions or make strategic choices and trade offs in that moment. I think until you've lived it, it's just a theory in an Excel spreadsheet and you're modeling. So I think it really where I think those years helped me and others who've been through that is when you're talking about downside cases and what can go wrong, you've just got the scars and you've got the lived experience.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think literally living in downside cases makes it easier to imagine, model, plan for downside cases. So there's something about the human brain that like a lived experience is more easy to understand. Obviously than like an academic experience that you read about or someone else is telling you about. So to be specific, the idea that revenues can go from growing to declining if you've never seen that happen, it just seems like a bookish exercise. But if you've actually been sitting in a board meeting, boardroom for months on end of a company that was growing last year and is suddenly declining and has to shift all the implications of that, the people implications of that, the hiring implications of that, the investment implications of that and the complexity of unwinding decisions when your environment changes. So the nuance of what it's like and how the ramifications of going from being in a positive scenario to a negative one, how complicated it can be.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of our portfolio, and at one point the fund was very severely underwater. And as you alluded to, the firms come out of that really strongly and thriving. But I don't think I understood the magnitude of the challenge that was facing the firm and some of my colleagues at that time, which is a blessing because I stuck around and learned a lot from it. So in hindsight,”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a really big and important question. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think it was a great time to join the industry. There was a period where I thought it was an awful time to have joined the industry and I thought I was suffering career-wise for not having been exposed to the Golden Days. But there was a period even before that, i.e. when I actually joined, when I was totally oblivious to what the context was that I was joining. So if I'm honest, I was really green when I joined and it was 2008 and I was not really deeply aware of the magnitude of what was happening in the financial markets and the magnitude of what was happening in my own firm that I had joined. So probably most listeners don't know, but Pamira had been a very strongly performing private equity firm up until that time. And then in the years following the global financial crisis, like many private equity firms, but quite severely hit in terms of valuations and performance.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think our junior professionals would still say the same thing today. I was with one of our summer associates. Talking about her experience, and she said the absolute best day was her day of the day. Nothing has changed, and I love your glasses half full attitude about the work ethic and learning, taking the positive out of those experiences, because I know they can be challenging. Speaking of challenging, you joined Premier in 2008 when the firm and the private equity industry more broadly, in fact, the whole of Wall Street, were under tremendous pressure. But Premier adapted and thrived coming out of that difficult patch. So what was it like to start your career during that time?”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rigor, I always think the fact that that was my first job was very formative and everything in terms of workouts seemed easy after that. Some of that I had to unlearn. So I think there was a degree of perfectionism in those years that can stand you in good stead when you're earlier in your career. But as you grow, you need to unlearn or at least balance out a little bit more and get more comfortable with not always being perfect. The other thing that really I learned from those years was I wanted a job that allowed me to be technical and analytical, but at the same time really engaging with people. So the most fun I remember having in those years with a client meetings or like the big team meetings where you were really brainstorming or getting other people's points of view. And so I think I really learned that I wanted to continue in a career that allowed me to be both analytical but really exposed to people as well and not only stuck behind the desk.”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, gosh, let's going back some time. So I'll probably pick one of those experiences to answer your question to the Morgan Stanley years. I was, as you say, I was there for three years, two in London and one in New York. So one thing that was always really important to me was to work in a really global international organization and context and environment. So I was really lucky to be able to bond to New York from London with Morgan Sani back in the day. A lot of the things I took from that time, things people would commonly say about working with smart people and working in places with really high standards, which sure obviously you can relate to as well. A few more specific things that have really stayed with me. So the work of those years is something that stayed with me forever. And there's good and bad to that. There's a lot of focus at the moment in big institutions and banks about making sure that people get the right balance in their lives. But the good of that, so the work ethic, the standards, the quality, the”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's start with your early career after graduating from the University of Cambridge. You worked at Morgan Stanley for three years before going to Harvard University for your MBA. What did you learn from those experiences that helped you in your private equity career?”
2022-08-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Permira’s Tara Alhadeff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT