YouSaid · the spoken record

Zach Buchwald

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61
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2026-01-23
most recent
2026-01-23
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1
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  1. “But the idea is we use best of breed managers and strategies from around the whole investment universe. So if I put together an OCIO portfolio at Russell, I'm building fixed income management, the best quality fixed income managers, the best private assets managers, the best cash, and so on, and best index products. We can kind of go everywhere within the ecosystem. And that was a model that I was very excited about because it became more about like thinking through the lens of what the client is looking to achieve and how can I use all of the tools and the ingredients available as opposed to sort of a set of tools that I had at hand from the company that I worked for.”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Yeah, exactly. I'm really proud to run. I'm the eighth CEO, by the way, of 90 years of Russell investments. I mean, so for a U.S. asset manager, that's old. And I think about the things that Russell has done in that time, Barry. I mean, it's been a real innovator and category creator. Everybody knows the Russell indexes, which were sort of cultivated and innovated in all sorts of cool ways. And we all have it in our pensions, in our 401 case. You know, Russell was the original pension investment consultant. We created that category. Russell was the original OCIO, and we're still a leader in OCIO. These are really sort of important categories that have a big impact on the investment ecosystem. And what was special to me about Russell, and the reason I wanted to join, is Russell's approach to doing all of these solutions is it's entirely open architecture. So the view is we build and implement portfolios at Russell, which is something I worked on at BlackRock. And to some extent, I'm Morgan Stanley too.”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah. Well, first and foremost, it's all about the client. And if you lose sight of that, understanding what the client is dealing with, their challenges, their ambitions, their aspirations, being a consultative provider. If you start from a push out, like you're the products that I have, here are the things that I've done before. It almost never works. And it also, that's not the age that we're living in today. The age that we're living in is how can I help you achieve the outcomes that you're trying to get to? How can I anticipate some of the challenges that you're going to experience? How can I help you learn from some of the things that I've seen in the sector or the industry? And you start from there and it builds a foundation with the client that is just sort of irreplaceable. So that's, I mean, that was one really important learning. Now, I came into Russell because Russell had, like, first of all, it's a 90-year legacy. Thank you for starting with that.”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “These companies that they might not be expecting or prepared for, and where could BlackRock play a role in helping them deal with those kinds of challenges? And we came up with seven situations, Barry, that we thought we're going to have like seismic type impacts on the companies. And four of them happened. And in three of those cases, BlackRock went on to play a really big role and run the general accounts. And that was more than $100 billion of assets. And we put on another $100 billion along the way. So that was the case where the business started growing very meaningfully. And I think BlackRock sort of”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah. So after the consulting practice, I went on to run the insurance business at BlackRock. That was a $200 billion business at the time, a little sleepy, not, you know, what I would say is like a growth center. And it was housed with the business itself was housed with true insurance experts, asset liability experts, people who really understood like the nuts and bolts of insurance companies. And I did not have an insurance background. And, you know, for the first year, I had an insurance guy sort of stapled to me every time I went to a client, make sure I didn't get out over my skis. But, you know, but, you know, this being an outsider sometimes can actually really help you think externally about some of the things that might be impacting the clients, the industry, the sector, the business itself. And early on when I was in that role, we ran an analysis of the whole U.S. insurance industry. Every company that was bigger than a billion dollars of general account assets. And we asked ourselves the question, what are some of the external factors that could impact?”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “That sounds like an HR strategy. I don't know that I had anything, any part of that. But there was a lot of talent for sure, and there continues to be a lot of talent. Some of those that worked on those assignments are essentially running BlackRock now. And it was the consultative nature of thinking about the challenges how we can create solutions to those challenges, thinking about the aspirations and the ambitions. And that doesn't just apply to workout situations. That applies to all, you know, kind of all the clients. And it's something that I've tried to import into my current role at Russell.”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “No, I mean, we called it advisory, but essentially it was like an investment banking function. I mean, it was really a consultative providing advice, running portfolio analytics, thinking about, you know, if you can separate like the liquidity crisis from the actual credit risk and sort of the expected cash flows on these securities, what could you expect to get back? And we created a roadmap for the government on how to invest in these securities that they took away, that they essentially backstopped from these big organizations and tried to create a roadmap to bring them back to par to repay all the taxpayers with interest. And in almost every respect over time, the government was successful in doing that. And BlackRock really played a very special role in creating those roadmaps. And, you know, it wasn't what I would think of as like a highly profitable business, but in terms of like the aura that was created around BlackRock as being like a solution provider, you know, sort of a force for good in the world, that's what we did. And it was a great role for me.”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I went to BlackRock with the guy that I was working for at Morgan Stanley, and we created a business that was essentially an advisory practice. This was 2008, and BlackRock was hired to work on a lot of these situations that were, you know, at the start of the crisis. So we worked with the Federal Reserve. We worked with the Treasury. A lot of the big financial institutions that had problematic portfolios. And BlackRock was very well positioned as a buy-side firm, as a company that sort of had an underwritten a lot of like the problematic derivative process.”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, well, I started as an associate within fixed income. I was in sales, I was in trading, I was in structuring. I always worked within the credit derivative space. And then ultimately credit derivatives started getting wrapped up in different ways. And I worked on the CLO platform. And Morgan Stanley had a leading CLO platform that by the end of my time there, I ran. And that was about, you know, I think about the role that CLOs play in the markets today. It's an enormous origination function that helps finance a lot of corporate America”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Not at all. Now, Lehman Brothers was a great place to start my career. But after two years, I went to Morgan Stanley, and that's how I think of the beginning of my career because I spent 10 years at Morgan Stanley. I was very invested in the firm and the firm was invested in me. I learned about the capital markets top to bottom. And I had a career there that took me from a starting associate role to running a business that became the CLO business, which now is like a real important part of capital markets.”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “So, out of school, I applied to law school, not sort of knowing where I was going. And I decided to have a little break before I went back to school. And I got recruited by Lehman Brothers. So I spent two years working in structured finance at Lehman Brothers. And it became apparent to me right away I didn't want to become a corporate lawyer because I worked with lawyers and that was not the job for me. But I had a knack for it. I enjoyed it. I always liked math even though I was an English major. And, you know, you can find other ways to put your writing and your reading acumen to work as well.”

    2026-01-23 · Masters in Business · Managing the Shift from Pensions to 401k with Zach Buchwald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source