YouSaid · the spoken record

Yann Robard

lines on the record: 78
first: 2024-06-17
most recent: 2024-06-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Probably the fear of not being good enough? I definitely was driven by fears. And that's why you said what you should wish you would have done earlier in life. Like, I don't regret anything, and I'm really proud. Fourteen-year-old Jan would look a 48-year-old Yan and be like, good for you, bud. From where I started to where I'm at today, I'm like, you're not arrogance, but just proud. But it took me some time to get to a point where I was like, oh, here are some patterns, here are some behaviors. How can I do better? How can I improve myself? How can I grow?”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say I was pretty insecure in my 20s. I was getting comfortable in my skin in my thirties. My forties had been my best decade. I've embraced who I am, and I probably about seven, eight years ago I just started getting curious looking inside. The outside world, I mean, you can have check, check, check, check, check, everything, but if you haven't dealt with your shit, it doesn't matter. So what's driving you? We all have fears, we all have patterns. So just be curious and try and unpack the fears that you inherited mostly from your parents, not because they didn't love you, but it's generational.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say fine inner stillness as quickly as possible. Unpack your shit. Find calm in the chaos. Make sure that your drive comes from a healthy place, not an unhealthy place. Be very aware of what is driving you. And there's no destination on this journey. So you got to enjoy the ride.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can be a good person and win. I just really believe that. I have to look at myself in the mirror every day and just be proud of not just what, but how and I really believe you can do it. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. Think about the long term. And again, like I'm not perfect. I will make mistakes. But my intentions are good or so, I believe. So just do the right thing, which is actually what's been interesting about the secondary market is that the leaders in the space of, generally speaking, been very good people. There is a camaraderie around the secondary market, which I think is unique. And again, it's a market done everything right all the time? No, it's learnt along the way. It's made us mistakes. But generally speaking, you've got good people in this industry trying to figure out the right way to do things.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I would go with David Dennison, who's the exeo CPPIB. I talk to him probably every couple weeks, and he's been just so good to me in terms of just, he's not a man of many words, and hopefully he's okay with me saying this, but he has just got an incredible North Star, and he just, these are your blind spots. This is what you need to be careful about. My mother, for her good and her challenges, she's been such an incredible supporter, and she's given me the conviction to go out there and grow my wings, so I appreciate her.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say problem finders versus problem solvers. If you just think outside the box, you can solve anything self limiting beliefs, limited thinking.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just got to be self aware of where you are. I have a cottage that's two hours north of Toronto I spent a lot of time up there in nature at the cottage, and I know when I need it.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really think it's culture. The culture of these firms are so important in terms of are people motivated? Are they rowing in the same direction? Are they well aligned? Are they in a good place? Are they stronger together or are they growing apart? So I think that's one of the big things in terms of continued success is aligning your people with the success of the organization and making sure that the culture is one that is set up for success. And then it's hard. And the reason I pause is because I don't think there's one model in private equity. I think there is so many different models that can get you to success. And it's different strokes for different folks and that's okay. The culture of one firm can be very different than the culture in a different firm. But have they attracted the right people that thrive in that culture?”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you look at all the transactional data you've collected over the years and you're looking at a new deal, I'm curious what you found the biggest drivers of success for private equity firms in the business.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, that's the secret sauce, though. Am I allowed to say that? I don't think I want to do the secret sauce. That's looking into the future, whatever the success is going to be. Do you think the secondary market has gone through a big period of innovation? And anytime you go through a period of innovation, you essentially expand the market. The market needs to catch up on capitalization before it can get to the next version of innovation, I would say. The secondary market is setting itself up for the next big wave of growth through all of the innovation that's happened over the last 10 years.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We talk about proactively pricing funds. We're using that AI to scrape data and coming out of PDFs into our models. And that allows us to avoid or at the place of using our resources for manual input, you're using it for actual analysis because the data's already in. It also allows for greater accuracy of data because actually those machine learnings are incredibly powerful. The accuracy that we're seeing out of our system, we're just seeing the benefits of that right now. The white papers that we're putting out as an example, these are all because of the data that's available to us that we can transform into insight. And that's good for the white papers that we put out. But imagine what that can do for our investment process when you've got that much data and you know how to mine it. So data is useless if it's not accurate and data is useless if you don't mine it. So you have to really build a technology platform that enables you to do both.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really interesting. We are a tech enabled asset management firm, and it's something that we focused on since our early days was we knew technology essentially was going to make a difference. And I remember sitting down with one of my mentors back in the day and I said, what have you done differently if you would do it again? He's like technology. If you don't get technology right, you're going to have 25 software systems that won't talk to each other. So we spend a lot of time in our early days really trying to figure out our tech stack. And today, wow, technology has enabled us. AI has enabled us. Machine learning has enabled us. Scraping data, turning that data into information into insight. That data, if transformed into insight, can be incredibly powerful. So there is a shift going on in this market right now. The people that are leaning into technology are going to be able to differentiate themselves. The people that are lagging are going to be left behind in a hurry.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's take the more conservative number 10% of $150 trillion is $15 trillion. Three of that is allocated to private capital. That's $12 trillion coming in the next 5 to 10 years? What if secondaries would take a quarter of that? You got $3 trillion coming into secondaries through private wealth. So I think that's the combination of volume and capitalization that gets us to that trillion dollar figure. And time will tell.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we see 21 to 31 as a decade of capitalization. Generally speaking, what happens is that capital lags opportunity. If you're out in the market right now, there's really two areas where LPs are looking to allocate private credit and secondaries. It's the talk of the town. So you know that just institutional market, it was $70 billion raised in 2021. Can it grow seven times to 490 by 2030? It did. That gets you to $500 billion. The second part of this is private wealth. There's $150 trillion in private wealth of assets under management. Two percent of that gets allocated to private equity or private capital. That's $3 trillion. It should be ten to twenty percent if it follows institutional capital models. That's fifteen to thirty trillion dollars of money flowing from private wealth into private capital over how long?”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's been capitalization and has been resources. Let's go through the history of the secondary market. two thousand one to twenty eleven the decade of institutionalization it went from five billion to twenty five billion during that decade most of it was just lp secondaries that was it 2011 to 2021 it went from 25 billion to 125 billion 132 to be exact another five times growth but during that decade it was the decade of innovation we went from just having lp secondaries to having private credit secondaries real estate secondaries infrastructure secondaries you had single asset continuation fund multi-asset continuation fund you had preferred equity you have naive lending all in one decade so we got to 125 billion but what that has done it's left the secondary market long opportunity insure capital there is not enough capital to absorb the pent up liquidity in this market”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By 2030, think about private wealth. Think how much capital is coming from private wealth. I would say that's a conservative assumption. So if you believe that private capital can grow to 30 trillion by 2030, the 1% that we're seeing right now in churn rate in private capital needs to grow to just over 3% in order for the secondary market to get to a trillion dollars a year. And so I think that from our perspective, like how do you get that churn rate up? Once somebody in NLP gets used to selling, it goes back to the market repeatedly because the first time's the hardest. So watch this space. The maturation of private credit, real estate infrastructure, the churn rate's going up, and private capital going to $30 trillion by 2030. That should get to a trillion Tam”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I'm on the record for saying that the secondary market's going to get to trillion dollars by 2031. Whenever I say that, the first reaction is you're crazy. And I've heard that a few times, I guess, in my career. But I have a deep conviction around this prediction. And I think you need to be able to break it down into two parts. How's the volume going to get there? And how's the capitalization of the industry going to get there? Let's talk about the volume. For me, the volume is very simple. It comes down to three things. How big private capital is going to get over the next five to ten years? What's the churn rate? And as sub asset classes like real estate, private credit matures, how much are they going to add to this market? Let's go through each one. Private capital. It grew from $5 trillion to $15 trillion from 2016 to 2023. That's a tripling. Can it double?”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their management companies and thinking about new products, thinking about new geographies, thinking about balance sheets, thinking about succession, thinking about all of these things, which is going to, I think, create an opportunity with regards to the GP stakes market. We're here to add another tool in the tool set for GPs as they think about their management company and how they want to manage that to give them another tool for liquidity.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting because in around 2019, we were doing all of these things with LPs, and we're like, well, actually, we could probably do this with GPs as well. Sit somewhere between the debt and the equity and provide structured equities for GPs for management companies. And essentially sitting between the debt and the equity in GP stakes and allowing GPs to be thoughtful about their management company and how they're managing it. What I found interesting is that for the longest time GPs were private equity, partnerships, and they were spending so much time on the underlying companies and how to add value to the underlying companies. And then just recently they woke up and they're like, whoa, wait a second, we're in asset management firm. And we should be thoughtful in terms of how we're managing our management company. So what you're going to see over the next decade, we believe, is this trend towards GPs being a lot more thoughtful in terms of how they're managing.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we're always looking at multiple occurrencing value, leverage levels, operating momentum, quality of the GPs. We proactively price 75 funds a quarter. We know what we're looking for. We know the average valuations, leverage levels, and we have a view as to the direction of these underlying funds and underlying portfolios. then gets boiled into a quarterly investment theme, as saying generally speaking, portfolio construction-wise, we're looking for a little bit more of this, a little bit more of that. It's an iterative process that really allows us to essentially be very focused. That's the trick here. We got two pipeline discussions a week, one on Monday, one on Friday. We know what we want. Pipeline comes in. It's just like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. That's one. And then you run.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Portfolios and be like, that's the one we want. And that's how you dedicate resources effectively and efficiently around that is being able to know what you're looking for when you see it pounce.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we do is you kind of heard we essentially give 60 to 70 percent of the value of portfolio taking 100% cash flows. So we're one and a half times asset coverage, J1. From our perspective, we've got the combination of diversity, high quality, structure, and the combination of those three things provides us, what we hope is portfolio construction. Then we have a whole team called portfolio construction that is looking at our funds as they're getting invested and they're saying, okay, well, we have a bit too much exposure here or too much of that sector exposure. So it's a real-time discussion between the total portfolio management team and the asset management team that deploys capital and they're talking to each other saying, hey, the next deal we would like it to look a little bit more like this. You need to know what you're looking for before it comes to market. We've seen 670 billion dollars go through our shop. We've done 22 billion of that. So the trick in culling that portfolio is being able to see these portfolio.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Diversification, diversification, diversification. So in the objective of generating resilient returns, mutative volatility, consistent cash flows, first port of call is diversity, diversity by asset by sector, by geography, by vintage, by duration, by GP. Then the second port of call is quality. We're really looking to deal with quality GPs that have had experience through cycles. It generally puts us towards the larger end of the market. We can have a debate as to whether or not they generate the best returns. I would suggest that they have a good opportunity to do that. Either way, they're very consistent in the way that they generate their returns. And if you think about what we're trying to do around consistent returns, that's our focus, diversify portfolios so that we can provide that consistency with muted volatility. And then the last part is our structure.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Listen. Oh, okay. Let us come back to you in a couple days. And by the way, nimbleness. We come back so quickly, thoughtfully. That's how we're trying to differentiate ourselves in this market.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That LP financing example that I gave that were set between the debt and the equity, and we're providing them an opportunity to accelerate liquidity on their private equity portfolio. Many times people have built these private equity portfolios over the last three to four years. They're sitting there saying, I love this portfolio. Don't make me sell now. And so they're sitting there as a team who's built that portfolio saying, I understand we're overallocated. It's a temporary phenomenon. And can we find a way that allows us to tactically reallocate but keep the upside? And in the process of doing that, it's not just keeping the upside. They keep the relationships. They keep the co-investment flow. They keep their advisory board if they want. So there's a lot of different ways that you can talk to LPs. But the first conversation you have to do is what are you looking to solve for? It's not us with a cookie cutter here's our product. Do you want to do this deal? It's like, let's.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything we do we focus on the win-win win. When we win our counterparty wins. All who have focused is how do we provide customized bespoke solutions where we sit down and we really listen to what does the counterparty looking to achieve and how can we essentially enable them to achieve that in an innovative way with a customized solution. Drawing on the twenty five plus years of experience in”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have two pipeline meetings a week. We have investment committees available on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We want to move Monimbly. We want to move quickly. But it's actually pretty easy to parcel out our pipeline because when you know what you want, the deal comes through to Transcript and you're just like pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, go. From an investment committee perspective, look, I think the reality is that it's an open room. Everybody can talk in the room. Everybody's invited to come in. And so we think that's a way to kind of teach the young folks the nuances of how people cut to the decisions and how to go from an idea concept to a decision and what are the questions and answers in order to get there. And it just feeds, I think, from our perspective, that culture of being better investors.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a clear vision so that people walk away from these sessions knowing uh-huh the top three to five things that we need to do for this half of the year or for the full year is this. So we spend a lot of time on that.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then within the asset management, we have folks that are in sub teams GP coverage that merely are the financial sponsors, but also focusing on both primary co-investments and then also the dealing folks on the secondary side. I spent a disproportionate amount of my time thinking about organizational structure and making sure that we align the organization to how we do things and making sure we have two off sites a year, one in January, one in June. We set KPIs in January. We keep ourselves accountable in June. And it's so important to bring the firm together, not just for informal bonds and being able to build relationships so that you essentially allow people to get to know each other and that breaks down silos, but also to just really keep the organization focused in terms of what are the strategic initiatives, what are we trying to achieve this year, what are our priorities. The trick is to simplify complexity and have”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got six pillars at Dawson Strategic Management, Capital Management, Asset Management, Portfolio Management, Operations Management, Firm Management, New Products and Partnership, Strategic, Capital Raising, Capital Asset Deploy, Portfolio Management Portfolio, Firm Management, Service Our Clients, and then operations.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's my passion. How do we make sure that we keep that? A Dawson or performance reviews, our combination of the what and the how. If you don't have both, you cannot succeed at Dawson. We measure out of five. The what is one, two, three? The how is zero one two. So if you're great at what you do three and you're culturally consistent one, that's a four you move forward. If you are a culture carrier and you're good at what you do, that's a four you move forward. But if you're great at what you do three, but you're culturally inconsistent, that's a three you're not moving forward. If you're culturally carrier, but you're not good at what you do, that's a three you're not moving forward. It's that simple. So we are always focused as we bring people in and we have so much that we do to really enable and empower employees to just allow them to grow, but it always comes down to the how as much as the why.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you can come through for your investors, and we're not perfect, we're going to make mistakes along the way. But if you're not making mistakes, you're not learning. If you can't be humble enough to appreciate the mistakes that you've made and be honest with yourself and honest with others as to what did you get right, what did you get wrong? And what can we learn from that? If you get to a point where you really believe that you are flawless, then like wow, you're heading in the wrong direction. I am a work in progress. And I'm always constantly trying to surround myself with people that are better than me, that have done this before, and just open and curious to the feedback they give me because I'm grown.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One percent of our revenues goes back to charity, and that's something that's near and dear to my heart. And if you talk to me about why am I doing all this, this is really about scale enables us to give back more. And the other thing that we have talked about is impact on ourselves. I don't know what I'm doing. I've never done this before. And so I'm learning and I'm growing. And the reality at the end of the day is you need to be so humble in this journey. You need to be so grateful. I pinch myself every day that I'm in the seat that I'm in, and I got to tell you I'm so lucky. And so you got to recognize that as scale, as success comes, how do you stay grounded? How do you stay grateful? How do you realize and recognize how lucky you are to be in the seats that you're in? And yet we're just getting started. The vision is so clear for me in terms of what we can do with this. And if we approach it with the right mindset, if we approach it with when you give you get, when you do good, good things happening.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mantra that we have a dust and we love what we do. We're really passionate about what we do. And so the types of people we attract just are so intellectually curious and intellectually stimulated. They're young. They're hungry. I am so proud of the team that we've been able to bring. That's what gives me the warm and fuzzies when I see the team getting empowered, enabled. I could talk about this for hours. I'm not doing this for the money. What am I doing this for? The word that I always use, which is overused, is impact. But impact can be on the employees. How do you enable and empower them? And if you can give them limitless opportunities within the organization and they say, hey, that's really interesting. Why don't I go spend some time over there? Go for it. We think about impact on our investors because if we can actually differentiate ourselves in the market with speed and certainty, then we can come through for them. We think about impact on communities.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the opportunity. We're growing, and that enables us to really attract some incredible talent, entrepreneurial, hungry but humble, in it together, stronger together. That's our mantra. We approach this in a way where we say when you give you get, when you do good things happen. And we're not going to rip your face off people. We are, how do we create the win-win-win in everything that we do? How do we create partnership? Call it the Canadian way of doing business. But at the end of the day, it's not just what we do, it's how we do it that gives us great pride. We understand that without investors, there would be no Dawson. We understand that at the end of the day, we should be so thankful, so grateful for the confidence and conviction that our investors provide us and trust us with our capital. And that's what drives us every day. I always picked intellectual compensation over financial compensation. And the”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the day, growth is an important way that we differentiate ourselves in the market. And as I said, we're just getting started. And growth and scale allows us and positions us to come through for our investors. And that's ultimately what it comes down to, is being able to differentiate yourself in the market and being able to move at that speed and scale. But it's not the only thing. We say scale matters because actually what's really interesting and what I've learned along the way is that a growing firm allows you to attract really interesting talent. Because the problem is that if you're a firm that is stagnant, what happens is that you have glass ceilings. There's not as many opportunities.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am a big believer in scale. I say scale matters big as beautiful, growth is good. We over time have become bigger, better, faster, stronger. We've become more resourced, more informed, more sophisticated. We have been able to invest in our team. We've been able to invest in our technology. In the whole journey of this, what we have been able to do is show up in the market with a product in which we can execute with speed, with scale, and with certainty, all because of scale. It's interesting in the secondary market, because as big as it's gotten, there's actually not that many players that can show up with a billion dollar check to provide liquidity to a counterparty certainly in speed and scale. So we're sitting there saying that's our opportunity. We say that we are unapologetic about our growth. We think that”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is limitless. If you think about a fifteen trillion dollars private capital market that's going to grow to thirty trillion by twenty thirty, our opportunities to inject liquidity into that market.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We did 2400 meetings in 24 months when we first started. We just pounded the pavement. We just went out there. We talked about it like going back to passion, patience, and persistent. Like we had a lot of conviction in what we're doing because we just thought there's a place in the market for this. We just had a lot of conviction and we started talking to the market. The concept of what we were talking about pivoting and adapting. We had to hear what the market was ready for. And we had to essentially take that, pivot, adapt, and then create structures where the market was ready for it. We probably came out and we were one step ahead too far of the market and we just kind of slowly but surely took feedback and got to a point where we're 175 people. I mean, I'm pinching myself. This is way beyond my wallet expectations. I'm so grateful of everything that we've been able to achieve. And it's just been an incredible ride and we're just beginning. That's the thing is I look at it and I'm like, wow, we've stumbled upon something.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here to replace selling. We're here to give another tool in the tool set, but if you lever, you encumber your assets. If you sell, you crystallize a loss, you forego future proceeds, you time the market. With us, what you can do is you can accelerate liquidity on your private equity portfolio. You don't have to time the market. You don't have to crystallize a loss, and you have exposure to the future upside. That we see as a win-win because actually when we outperform, that's a good thing for us in our counterparty. If they would have sold, then they would have left that upside to the buyer. With us we can win together.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the bike ride, it was if you want to generate liquidity on your private equity portfolio, you really have two options. You can either leverage it up, which in this day and age, you could get 25 to 35% LTV maybe before all of this you could get 35 to 45 percent. Or you could go and sell. And if you go and sell, you're probably selling it in those days 90 to par in today's environment, probably more like 85 to 95, give or take. And so the concept was, can we sit in the middle and provide LPs with the opportunity to accelerate liquidity on their private equity portfolios and keep the upside? What we do is that we give 60-70% of the value of the portfolio. We'll take 100% of the cash flows from that portfolio until we get to, let's call it a minimum return of a multiple one three one four or eight to ten percent, and then we'll split cash flows. 80% to you and 20% to us. So we're not here to replace debt.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investor would buy into the public markets and do nothing with it for 10 years. You would say that that's probably fiduciarily irresponsible. Well, that's what's happening in private equity. People commit to funds, and they hold, and they don't tactically reallocate in good times and bad. The secondary market isn't there just in bad times. In twenty one, it was private equity done too well. They were overallocated for the right reasons. Should you tactically reallocate at that point in time? So that's what's happening. There's a shift in the sophistication that's happening in private equity, which keeps the model intact, which is what has made private equity, in my mind, special, given that patient capital, so people can do the right things to the businesses and give the LPs what they need, which is in a way of being able to essentially manage in a more sophisticated way their private equity portfolio.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the right side, you've got LPs that have built their private equity portfolios in different times, in different markets, and has reacted to the markets in different ways. The secondary market sits between the two and essentially provides both and doesn't disrupt the ecosystem. The GPs get that patient capital. The LPs get to tactically reallocate their portfolios when they need. And when you really think about it, what's the secondary role? It's starting to sound like a public market. When you start selling a share of Google or Walmart at the end of the day, that's a secondary. And so this is what the secondary market has been doing slowly. It seems like exponential growth, but the secondary market has gone to $135 billion at its biggest year in 2021, and that represents one percent of private capital. If you think about it, imagine a world where a public market”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think from my perspective, so basically, if you ask me, well, what's the problem with private equity? Because I've said, okay, better returns, okay, better governance model. The agel question in private equity is illiquidity. And that's where the secondary market comes in to help and enable liquidity to an otherwise illiquid asset class. And what it actually does is that it kind of enables the industry and the GPs and the LPs to have what they need. On the left side, you have GPs that need patient capital.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if we tie this back into your founding of Dawson, the other piece that comes up in private equity is just illiquidity and whether the reason you're getting higher returns is you're getting paid in illiquidity premium, how did you think about that dynamic in the context of what you wanted to do at Dawson?”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on what time period that you're talking about. I would say from a good part of the time and from the last 20 years, what has happened is that private equity has bought well, has then added value during their whole period, and then essentially been able to sell at a better multiple because the business was in better condition, maybe because the owners of the assets weren't focused on quarterly earnings, but they were focused more on the three to five year and how to make that company better. So on exit, they got a better relative multiple than they did at entry. All of that is going to be debatable. You're going to find examples where that's not the case. But generally speaking, on average, if you got a better governance model where private equity can add operational value to these underlying companies, where there's more alignment between the management team, the shareholders, and the underlying beneficiaries, then what you have is you have a situation.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, it's interesting if the data is showing that private equity exits to the public markets have a pop, we also know that on the entry, there's a pop from the public markets and the take private. What happens in the middle?”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The exits than M&A does, corporates. So it's another tidbit around whether public markets may be paying up for assets that are exiting from private equity versus a corporate world. We believe that we've got a paper out on this, that private equity is a rational one.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you can find examples for sure where there's a company that may have been overvalued and will be sold at a discount, but on average during that period of time it has. The other thing that we looked at was what are private equity multiples versus public market multiples? And what you see in certainly over this crisis or this time period since 2021, public markets have gone from 13.5 times to 21.5 times LTM EBITDA. Private equity has stayed consistently between 13.5 to 14 and a half times. So you ask me which one is rational. Is it the public markets that are moving from 13 and a half to 21 and a half times or is it private equity that stayed at a band of 13 and a half to 14 and a half times? On exit M and A on average is twenty-five percent and IPOs are forty two percent pops, which would suggest that public markets pays more for assets on.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You disaggregate it by vintage year, what you're seeing is that it's incredibly consistent between 20 and 30 percent from 2010 to 2022. Then people are like, yeah, but maybe the winners get a big pop, but the laggers, they must be sold at a discount or less in value. And actually we disaggregated it. And yes, there is a success bias for companies that have been held less than particularly two years, but less than four years because GPs haven't been able to value the company at the pace in which the value was increasing otherwise LPs and maybe the market would be skeptical. But even the laggards, one that's been held for eight years or more, are popping at anywhere between high single digits to double digits. So the winners and the laggards actually exit at pops to their valuation. So when we look at that, private equity is actually undervalued, not overvalued based off of that information.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source