gaim

Over my favourite Eggs Benedict on Lexington Avenue, I meet with Joe Pescatore. Now at sweet- spot, mid-tier investment bank Jefferies Asset Management the focus is a middle market hedge fund seeding platform. In fact he has been driving a major research initiative on seeding in conjunction with Boston –based CISDM, in response to investors’ requests for another measure to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. This is the first risk-adjusted systematic review of the business performance of funds at different levels of seeding intervention – versus no help at all. The results have showed clearly that those that have support perform better.  “Investors need to know which ones are most likely to survive and why”.

Back on East 52^nd Street I am delighted to catch up with one of the most experienced and successful veterans in the alternatives business Howard Berkowitz, MD, CEO of Blackrocks’s $22bn Fund of Funds business. I am sitting inches from one the eight original casts of Rodin’s “The Thinker” when Berkowitz tells me that low barriers to entry attract the best and worst managers means that ”Someone’s got to be the gatekeeper and do the ongoing due-diligence - the key is finding where the market inefficiencies lie and which is the best manager for the job”. He is hugely proud of his former role as Chairman of the influential Anti-Defamation League and now he is on the Executive Committee, Washington Institute for Near East Policy - committed to finding solutions to global terrorism that affects our world. I get up to go and he hands me a copy of “The Shia Revival“. ” If you want to know more about the most important movement that will affect the future of your children you must read this” he says.

Madison Avenue. I am very lucky to meet John Paulson, Principal, Paulson & Co, famed for being one of very few funds that correctly read the sub-prime market. To put it mildly his reputation has soared even further than where it was pre-crisis – and the talk on The Street is how did he correctly value the situation when the overwhelming majority of other players large and small, did not? Well, we will all have to wait a bit to hear those insights. But with an office that is a homage to Alexander Calder - one of his (and my) favourite cultural icons, it is clear is that Paulson has also become an icon of clear thinking in our messy financial world.

I have not timed my meetings well this trip and underestimate how long it actually takes from A to B. Rush Downtown to Standard & Poor’s where I meet with Jacqueline Meziani working on a new generation of risk assessment. She is interested in ascertaining who lost and who is taking advantage of the sub-prime situation – how and why. “Valuation is the key and losers in the sub-prime debacle did not read their valuations correctly. Many funds are holding on in fear and valuation techniques are just going have to improve.” While she senses the jury is out on regulation she speaks highly of the Hedge Fund Working Party recently set up in London having a go at self-regulation. Current book at the top of her pile? “The Social Framework of Mediaeval Monasteries” –an old take on pertinent and perennial themes of perception versus reality?. “You got it”.

While there I hop two blocks to catch Kent Clark, CIO, Hedge Fund Strategies of Goldman Sachs fund of fund operation fed only by external managers -and proud new chairman of the board of trustees of New York School of Jazz And Contemporary Music. What interests him at the moment is at the macro asset management business level and the continued concentration of the big firms. “How do you mix the best of what is available in house and externally in a way that is free from conflict of interest within a large asset management house?” - Kent is speaking on this topic at the upcoming Gaim Invest. Favourite thinking spot? “Playing guitar in the basement –well it’s really much more like meditation”

Back Mid-town, I just about catch the train to Greenwich, CT to meet with Brad Williams, ex Goldman Sachs and now Director of Product Development for Tudor Investment Corp, one of President Mark Dalton’s right hand men. We talk about their new strategic directions and upcoming product launches -becoming more institutional than in the past. Apart from being a great opportunity to meet the legendary Tudor Corp, this has been a wonderful excuse to pass through Grand Central Station and wonder at the spectacular barrel-vaulted ceiling with its restored celestial green and gold mural of the heavens. Absolutely stunning. Hope London’s renovation of the Victorian railway masterpiece, St Pancras, will have the same Wow factor in its reincarnation as the new Eurostar terminus. What a difference a grand entrance makes!