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Yann Robard

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

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“So, I think there's one narrative that I hear a lot in private equity that I struggle with. And that is that private equity valuations are opaque, they're irrational, and particularly in times when public markets decline and private equity doesn't follow. So we spend a lot of time on this. What we did was we went back to 2005 to 2022, and we looked at over a thousand companies and we asked ourselves, When a private equity company exits, What does it exit at relative to what it was carried at two quarters prior? And the answer is it pops 28%. So there is a 28% gain at exit, which suggests that private equity is undervalued, not overvalued. So people said, okay, that's on average for 15 years. But what does it mean like year over year? Because there's got to be good years and bad years.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Patient capital, what private equity can do is actually focus on providing the time necessary to build the business over the long term. And sometimes it takes investments in the business where it might impact quarterly earnings to do best for the company over time. And I'm not saying that private equity doesn't have its flaws. It goes through cycles as well. People will do things from time to time. But generally speaking, on average and over the long term, private equity has done better than public markets. We call this the alternative investments. I'm not sure it's so alternative. And if you think about how many public companies have stopped being public companies over the last 10 years, about half as many, you got to ask yourself, the capital is flowing to private equity for reasons. Companies are choosing not to be public for a reason. I find it really interesting because there's the age-old debate as to whether private equity has outperformed public markets. I think the answer for me is clear. Yes, it has.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, the answer for me is that I do believe public markets has its set of issues. 70% of public markets trade automatically, ETFs, passive. So you got 30% of the market that's actually active. Of that 30%, what percentage are actually active? And by the way, when you are a public company, those people that are stewarding that company are usually stewarding towards quarterly earnings. Is that the best way of managing a company to long-term value by making them focus on quarterly earnings versus a long-term success of this business? So what private equity has brought is this model where there is probably more alignment with the managers, with the shareholders, with the ultimate beneficiaries of it, because usually more often than not, the people investing in private equities are pension plans, insurance companies. And if they outperform, the net benefit are the underlying individuals. But with that alignment and with that.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, deep appreciation for private equity, and I will put on the table that I am biased on private equity having watched it over the last 25 years. I think that I am a big believer that private equity does outperform public markets. And we have spent a lot of time trying to look at the data in so many different ways. And over the long term, or at least any kind of five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, I don't see a time period where private equity hasn't outperformed public markets at the end of the day. And so what I recognize through that experience is that this is a market that I want to lean into. This is a market that I really believe. And I think that from my perspective, spending a lot of time understanding. Public markets”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So in that context, you had this middle road idea of debt and equity. And as you said earlier, anytime you're trying to innovate, you have to pair it with where the market is. So I'd love to get your perspective on after spending those 14 years in private equity, how you thought about the private equity market in the context of what you were looking 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
“From my perspective, you got to be safe and you figure out ways to go about being safe, the people that you bring with you, obviously lots of safety. I don't know that you balance the serendipitous part of it. Like, I think for me, it has become like this incredible release where my life is chaotic at times. And these points in times are so special where you can put your phone down for a while and just really take care of yourself, take care of your mind, have kind of a rest and recharge. And safety comes with just preparation at the end of the day and knowing what you're doing and knowing your limits.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's just like there's such clarity of thought. And you're like, oh, well, that's what I have to do. And so that's what I use nature for over and above just being out there. And I'm a bit of a social introvert. So I need time on my own to recharge. And that's what nature and that's what the Arctic actually provides me of all these great ideas.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so nature soothes my soul. I have spent a lot of time in nature to just kind of recharge and some of my best ideas have always been in nature. So I have a history of spending time and I've gone through different chapters. I had a hiking chapter, then I had a biking chapter. I'm in my canoeing chapter, but it always, I think in my 20s of exploring the world, probably in my mid-30s, I was like, well, wait a second time. There's a lot to see in doing Canada. And I started going to the Arctic, which is the territories in Canada, and started spending time doing week-long canoes. This particular trip was two and a half weeks of biking just to really kind of clear my head and particularly some of the best ideas that I've gotten for Dawson has always happened in these trips where on day one, two, and three, your brain rests. Not much goes on in there. On day four, it's now rested.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You haven't thought about this, this, and this. I came back a third time. I told him, look, this is not about you, this is about me. I need to go do this. So it took me three attempts. It was like Hotel California. I could check in, but I could never check out. But eventually I got to a point where it was go time. And that was June of 2015 on my birthday.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And essentially, that's where the idea came to be. And on this bike ride, you can imagine I had a lot of time to think, maybe a bit too much time to think. But I was thinking about, look, okay, I actually love what I do. I just need change. And is there a market opportunity out there where I can really kind of lean into it and provide a new tool in the tool set for private equity investors? And as I thought about it, I thought about maybe we can be somewhere between the debt and the equity and provide preferred equity or structured equity for private equity investors. Can we enable them to accelerate liquidity on their private equity portfolios but keep the upside and the flexibility? Can we give more tools for people to be more active in the way that they manage our private equity programs? And lo and behold, we went from this bike ride where I came back and I went to my boss and my boss said you're having a midlife crisis. Let's go think about it. I came back a second time. He's like,”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It had been 14 years, I had had great run. I was turning forty. I was getting, I think, at a point in time where I was increasingly less inspired, not because the organizations, because they always have a special place in my heart. I just need a change. And so it took two to three years for me to kind of just go through that gestation period because you can have good days and bad, and then you go through a period of time like, okay, that three months wasn't as fun as the last three months. But once you start getting to a point where you're just like, hmm, it's been six to nine months. And I'm feeling less inspired. And then you have to take a year or year and a half to actually build the conviction to go out and do it. And where it really came to be was this infamous bike ride that I took from Whitehorse Yukon to Fairbanks, Alaska, and the midpoint of the journey was Dawson. And so on this infamous bike ride, it's about a thousand miles. I was sleeping on the side of the road. The Arctic has a special place in my heart.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both our counterparties and our investors. This has been a journey of innovation. I mean, sometimes we call ourselves a Google of private equity, because we're always coming up with new ideas, new financial products, new financial technologies at the end of the day. But innovation needs to be done in a way where the market is ready.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, the interesting thing about these markets is that you need to be half a step ahead of the market, but you can't be a full step ahead of the market. It's really interesting. Markets need evolutions, not revolutions. So one of the things that I learned while I was at CPPIB is there's so many times where it can be a good idea, but if the market's not ready for it, you can bang the head against a wall unless you pivot and adapt to make the strategy consistent with what the market is ready for. And I think that was a huge lesson for me along the way in all of the different businesses out there in terms of being able to really people bang their heads against the wall. And then if you look right, there's a door right there. Just go through the door. One of the things at Dawson that I'm the most proud of is just how we've pivoted, how we've adapted, how we listen to the market at the end of the day and be able to continuously innovate based off the feedback we're getting from the market to be able to provide interesting solutions to.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was really interesting because that period of time, certainly in that era, CPP was building, and it was very thoughtful in the way that it went about allowing them to go into different products. And they were an innovator in that market. And I got lucky. In hindsight, everything I've done in my career has always been about intellectual compensation over financial compensation. And I was lucky to be in the right seat of the right time with that organization that was enabling us to go out there and pursue ideas during a period of time where that firm was growing and scaling really large and trying to find ways and unique ways to deploy capital where they could generate good risk adjusted returns. Now, did I wish at the time when I was going through that that it would go quicker than it did? Absolutely. I was a young whippersnapper that really was impatient at times. But in hindsight, looking back, it was just this incredible experience. And actually, those moments when they held me back a little bit.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just needed to have conviction in your ideas, like you spot an opportunity and you have to really go after it. And that takes passion persistence and patience. Something I learned during the Mexican furniture store days. And that has been essentially my whole career path is just leaning into, not with arrogance, but with confidence and conviction around an idea. And when people tell you that it's not going to happen, not listen to them. Just go after the idea. If you believe in it authentically and genuinely. Individuals and humans are so much more capable than they think they are. And I think there's a lot of self-limiting beliefs out there. And it is a lot of the time chatter around other people that are telling you it's not going to happen when it can.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fascinating. You know, I think the one thing about all of this is that I've been in this industry for a really long period of time. So I've developed a good understanding of the ecosystem and a deep understanding of private equity during that period of time. But what it did do was enabled me to give me the skills to really understand how to, again, take an idea and make it happen. So at the beginning it was funds and it's opening up London. Then it was a secondary. And so always kind of leaning back into that entrepreneurial flair to really kind of build businesses from scratch and then enable them to scale successfully.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I joined in 2001, there was 24 people. I left it with 1,200. We went from 7 billion to 285 billion from 2001 to 2015. It was an entrepreneurial adventure of watching an institution come to be. And what they did was they fed my entrepreneurial spirit by allowing me to go build businesses along the way. So at the beginning, I started with building a funds business and I was involved in opening the London office. And then in 2007, they gave me the mandate to build a secondaries program. So we went from doing funds and co-investments to essentially building a direct team and we built a team of 15 people that went and built a direct program in secondaries out in the marketplace. I guess the last chapter, they gave me the ability to launch a co-investment program as well. So four different chapters along the way. And it was an entrepreneurial experience with institutional support.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I thought to myself, look, whether or not this works, I'm going to learn a lot. They had a big vision in terms of what they were going to do with their private equity program. So I leaned in.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was now O one and the tech bubble was bursting and decided that probably not the best thing to do was be in the Mexican furniture store despite all the great experiences. So somehow I got a job at JP Morgan. So I got back into investment banking and nine months later I decided to leave because I got a call from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in December 2001 asking whether I wanted to be part of a team that was building a private equity portfolio. I didn't know what private equity was at that point in time, but it sounded great. So I chose to leave JP Morgan. And people looked at me and they were like, your ability to make career decision is zero. You chose a Mexican furniture store over investment banking. You got back into investment banking and now you're leaving to at that point in time was the government, essentially.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh boy, there's so many. Or, I mean, we're gonna have to go through and have a beer over this one at some point in time. We essentially had wine racks that was going in the wrong direction because we literally had no idea what furniture was or how to go about doing it. So we were learning lots. And I did this with a partner of mine and we were 22 and 24. lots of big lessons learned, including resilience. I think that's probably the one that I learned the most is how to just lean into yourself and create conviction around an idea that you had and that with grit and patience and passion and persistence, humans can do a lot more than they think they can.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really learned how to take idea in your head and make it happen and how to make decisions at a young age. Nobody was telling you what to do. You really didn't have any bosses. You were the boss. So you just had to make best decision with available information. And that's something I've taken through my whole career with that.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somehow or another, I got a full time offer to go back to this investment banking firm. And in my third year university, I went to Sweden for six months. I met three Mexicans there. I went to Mexico during spring break of my fourth year. And I realized, hey, there's an opportunity here to import Mexican furniture from Guadalajara to Toronto. And I came back and I thought that was a much better idea than taking the investment banking offer. So when the person called and said, hey, I got good news, he worked hard to get the sailor jacket guy a full-time offer. It was not obvious at the end of the day. But he came back and he's like, I've got great news. I've got an offer for you. And I said, I'm not going to take it. And he's like, well, what did I lose out to? Is it another firm? I was like, no, I'm going to start a Mexican furniture store. And he's like, sorry, we lost the sailor jacket guide to a Mexican furniture store. I did that for about two to three years. And, you know, in a funny kind of way, it was both.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I learned how to work hard. I learnt a lot about finance. Finance was a bit mystical for me because I hadn't grown up in a world where finance was really discussed. So it was a different world for me that I was navigating and I was growing quite significantly during that period of time. Learning lots, working hard.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you think you're wearing a suit, but you're not wearing a suit, and everybody's noticing, so you should go buy yourself a suit. And I was like, I don't have the money to buy a suit. And he's like, here's 200 bucks. Go buy yourself a suit, and come back to the office. So off I went. And that was my investment banking opportunity, which was a very eye-opening experience”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interestingly enough, it all started on a co op term. It co op term that I had where I ended up in investment banking. I didn't know what investment banking was. I showed up the first day with an earring in my ear. I had khaki pants on and a sailor jacket, which is basically a suit jacket with gold buttons. The individual that I first sucked brought me into the office and they basically said, you're going to have to take that earring off to work in investment banking. And I said, really? Because I've had that for a couple years and this is late 90s. So this was a very different era. He said, yeah, I don't know what to tell you. You got to take that earring off to work investment banking. So I took the earring off. Two, three days later brings me back into the office and he's like, just so you know, you're wearing”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The question was whether or not you could be successful and be a good person. And so it was a narrative that was less about the money and more about taking care of others.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My upbringing is probably a little bit different than most finance peoples, and the fact that I grew up in a family that was very left-leaning to say the least. And so as I was growing up, the narrative is that the 1% were not necessarily the best type of people. Through all of that somehow or another I stumbled into finance and here I am 48 years later.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guests on today's show is Jan Robark, founder of Dawson Partners, a leading global alternative asset manager overseeing $20 billion that provides innovative, structured solutions to the private markets. Formed initially as Whitehorse Liquidity Partners and rebranded as Dawson, both names, for inspired by Yan's Thousand Kilometer Bicycle Journey in the Canadian Arctic that led to his becoming a trailblazer in the market. Our conversation covers Jan's entrepreneurial path, including 14 years in the formative stages of Canadian pension CPPIB. We discussed the success of the private equity industry, valuations, liquidity, the necessity of scale, and creating solutions that balance the needs of GPs and LPs. We turn to the process and culture at Dawson and the exciting future of the secondaries market.”
2024-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Yann Robard - Liquidity Solutions for Private Capital at Dawson (EP.392) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source