Parker & Armondo Join Rockefeller Capital Management to Help Lead Wealth Management Expansion

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Michael Parker, formerly RBC’s wealth management head of recruiting and Michael Armondo, formerly Merrill’s Market Executive in Dallas have joined Rockefeller Capital Management to help build out the firm’s wealth management business.
The Parker and Armondo hires follow on the heels of a flurry of hires over the last year by Fleming and his high powered team as they continue their strategy to turn Rockefeller into a full-fledged investment manager.
Mike Fleming has been laser-focused on growing the firm to a $100B business, and with deep-pocketed Viking Global funding the growth, he has wasted no time. Last fall he acquired Greer Anderson adding a quick $200m in AUM.
Fleming’s investment banking experience is a perfect fit to help build a company via acquisitions. After the Greer deal was announced he said: “We’ll do more acquisitions. I have done a lot of acquisitions my whole career. “
Fleming appeared to be in the running to be the next head of Morgan Stanley, but surprised many last year when he left and joined the Rockefeller business. So far he is leaving no doubt among observers that he is quite capable of both running and building a Wall Street firm.

How to Be The Type of Person Everyone Wants to Know…guest article by Hazel Gale

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Some people are simply a joy to be around. The conversation flows effortlessly. You laugh. You’re genuinely interested. You look forward to seeing them, and when you part ways you feel like their company was a valuable use of your time.

Obviously, this connection has partly to do with how much you have in common, but I think there’s more to it than that. This person usually has a secret ingredient.

Understanding your mindset
According to psychologist Carol Dweck, a person’s mindset can come in two flavors: fixed and growth. By understanding the difference between the two, we can shed light on why some people are better than others at showing us a good time.

In a nutshell, someone with a fixed mindset believes we are what we are, and that things — meaning personality traits, capabilities, beliefs about ourselves, etc. — don’t really change. For example, with a fixed mindset, if I’m bad at maths, then that’s just the way I am. I’ll always be bad at maths. There really isn’t any point in trying to improve my skills. If I believe myself to not be a funny person, then that will continue to be my destiny, etc.

On the other hand, an individual with a growth mindset believes in constant evolution. I am what I am now, but that’s different from what I was before, and what I will be in the future. If I’m bad at maths now, I can work at it and potentially become a maths genius — given the proper motivation, of course. If I don’t find myself to be very funny now, I can practice my joke-telling skills and comedic delivery, and maybe I’ll have them rolling in the aisles one day. Everything is a matter of effort.

Some people tend more toward a fixed mindset and others toward that of growth, but it’s not entirely binary. Most of us will shift between the two outlooks depending on our situation.

The way we evaluate our personal sense of worth, success and ability differ depending on our mindset. The fixed mindset individual judges themselves against others. In order to feel good at something, they have to be better than everyone else around them, or at least somewhere near the top. When this is the case, fear of failure is ramped up, and they’ll be likely to shy away from challenges, even — in fact especially — in the areas they consider themselves gifted. This is because any failure suffered threatens to jeopardize their “talented” status. One slip up and they’re no longer the genius they, or others, thought they were. Better to not risk it at all.

Furthermore, this mindset breeds arrogance, because — looking down from their fiercely protected spot at the top of the heap — a fixed mindset individual genuinely feels superior to the people they surround themselves with. In fact, they need to think in this way in order to feel of worth.

The growth mindset individual though, will feel successful, worthy, and purposeful when they’re learning. What this essentially means is that failure, as a concrete idea or our general understanding of it, doesn’t really exist, because the harder a task or an undertaking is, the more we stand to grow as a result of doing it — even if we don’t do it perfectly. With a growth mindset, we welcome challenge because instant success and recognition are not the ultimate goals.

Needless to say, in the long run growth-minded people have the potential to go further, and grow bigger, in all aspects of their lives.

So how does this apply to being great company?
Some fixed-minded people tend to act in a way that can make us feel small, and they seem to relish that outcome. They’re the ones who smirk when we slip up, the ones we wouldn’t want to show an unfinished project to, or see us in tracksuit trousers and a battered t-shirt first thing on a Sunday morning. They’re the ones we wouldn’t want to say anything stupid in front of, and if we did, we would feel the need to justify ourselves to save face.

If someone slips into a fixed mindset, suddenly everything and everyone around them begins to function like a mirror. They’re forced into a perpetual state of self-referencing. They ask: “How does this friend, topic, job, choice of music, etc. make me look?” And it can be contagious. Like a bitchy, competitive group of school children, everyone around a fixed person can catch the bug, and end up falling into an uncomfortable pattern of one-upmanship, which can quickly turn ugly.

So a fixed-minded friend can be uncomfortable to hang out with because they have the potential to handicap our growth as well. Anticipating judgment causes us to take up a defensive stance, and because we’re busy protecting ourselves, we hold ourselves back. We can’t take on risk when we’re under threat. We can’t stretch ourselves when we’re fearfully clinging to a sense of self-worth that seems to suddenly be under fire.

On the flip side, there are really good times to be had with those who make us feel comfortable enough to explore. When we’re with growth-minded people, were present. A freedom to engage more fully develops out of liberation from any need to check or contain ourselves. If someone we’re with is in a growth mindset, we can sense their abandonment of the concept of failure, and so we can be infinitely more comfortable in making mistakes.

Additionally, because growth-minded people don’t have to look in those proverbial mirrors all day, they’re better able to see the Other, and they’re able to connect with those around them in a much more authentic way. In the company of this kind of person, it’s easier to feel understood and welcome. And when we feel accepted, we can let go of our own need to constantly self-reference. Suddenly, the space between two people becomes the focus, and is more easily filled with meaningful conversation or activity or whatever else it might be that we can learn the most from at that time.

With competition off the table, growth-minded people feel genuinely happy for our successes, and we can feel unconditionally proud of theirs too. These are the people whose good moods lift us up. Their bad moods may not be completely absent, but they seem rare and don’t drag us down with them. They’re the ones who will ‘like’ your stuff on Facebook without feeling like they’re handing over some of their power.

Some of my oldest and greatest friends are exactly like this, but having a growth mindset is not a quality that’s reserved only for people we know inside and out. Generally, you can sense it in a person the moment you meet them. And this isn’t just because they’re pandering to you, either. It’s not necessarily only the people who wouldn’t criticize a work in progress, or laugh at the stupid thing you just said. But rather, when that stuff happens, we don’t feel as if they’re mentally removing chips from our worthiness stack.

For people living in the developed world — meaning those of us for whom basic survival isn’t an enormous challenge — our deepest worries seem to spring from questions regarding our adequacy; our good-enoughness. But good enough for what? Or, perhaps more importantly, for whom? When you really ask yourself that question, it usually boils down to comparison and other people’s perceptions, in one way or another. At the root, our greatest fears concern our likeableness. Our lovability. And it’s those fears that can freeze us into a fixed mentality.

So there’s a sad irony to all of this. Although fixed people can come across as arrogant and superior, it’s often a deep, and sometimes unconscious, insecurity about themselves that causes them to behave in that way. What this means is that the people who compete with others are usually doing so out of a desire to feel worthy of those same people’s admiration, love or attention. But of course, by striving for connection in this way, they’re far more likely to achieve the opposite.

You can be truly great to hang around with when you accept yourself as an evolving entity. Be comfortable with the fact that you’re growing, not grown. What I’m not saying is that you have to be 100 percent self-assured to be fun to know and be around. That would be a daunting ask, and overconfidence is usually a trait that belongs to the fixed category anyway. What I am saying is, being enjoyable to hang out with has more to do with being comfortable with your vulnerability. It’s about being able to let your guard down because you know that your weaknesses don’t define you.

If mindsets are contagious, then there’s no real way to know who caught the fixed bug first in any relationship. It could have been you, or it could have been them. But awareness of the two mindsets, as well as your own thought patterns, means that you have the potential to dole out the antidote as well as the ailment. By adopting a growth mindset, you can put a stop to the epidemic and inspire others to grow with you.

So take yourself less seriously because your imperfections are the things that people really connect with. Learn to laugh at yourself and enjoy the fact that others can do the same. Be the student, not the teacher. Ask questions when you don’t know something, and don’t worry so much about f*cking things up. In the end it means that not only you, but also anyone you spend time with stands a better chance of enjoying life.

READ MORE from Hazel: https://medium.com/s/notes-on-changing-your-life/how-to-be-the-type-of-person-everyone-wants-to-know-b7e996313c39

GET HAZEL’S BOOK: Fight: Win Freedom From Self-sabotage

A book on the psychology of self-sabotage and how to take control.
Order it now on Amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fight-Lessons-Battles-Won-Lost/dp/1473662443

Telephone: +44 (0)7870 180 548
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Nussbaum’s Nut Tree Reaches a $1B AUMb

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Opportunistic alternative credit investment manager Nut Tree Capital has reached $1B in total AUM. The firm, led by founding partner and CIO Jed Nussbaum, is part of the Bahrain based Investcorp Hedge Fund Partnership platform. Lionel Erdely, head of the platform said “From the first day we met Jed and his team back in 2015, we have been confident in the firm’s holistic approach across the capital structure, focus on fundamental research and portfolio construction, and deep experience in managing portfolios and teams.”

Investcorp’s platform was launched in 2004, was one of the first in the alts space to provide seed and acceleration capital to managers. Its’ most recent addition was Shoals Capital.

Mackenzie Launches Three New Liquid Alt Funds

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Mackenzie Investments announced the launch of three new liquid alternative funds. The newly launched funds will be part of the investment firm’s alternative investment offerings which currently includes their multi-strat absolute return fund.

In a statement released by Mackenzie, Mike Schnitman, SVP of Products said “We can now take a modern approach to portfolio construction that will create opportunities for stronger, better-diversified portfolios and outcomes for our investors. By using liquid alternatives’ winning combination of more diversification and lower correlation to the markets, we can help provide investors with improved portfolio stability with less reliance on market direction.”

In the same statement Mackenzie Investments President and CEO Barry McInerney said “Our alternative solutions open up new options for investors, so that they can be better positioned to reach their long-term financial goals.”

The new funds’ strategies are:

Mackenzie Global Macro Fund: Long/Short in equity, fixed income, commodities and currencies.

Mackenzie Global Long/Short Equity Alpha Fund: Long/Short global equities. 

Mackenzie Credit Absolute Return Fund: Total return fixed income. 

Candidate Assessment Traps>> Killer Product or Sales Skills?

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The age old question always asked when hiring a capital raiser. Is the candidate’s track record a function of deep investor relationships and their sales ability, or is it the market demand for the fund they are selling? We have studied that very question since conducting our first hedge fund search in 1990. Here, we will try to provide clarity around the best practices used in assessing fund raising talent. This is part of an ongoing series that will cover the full range of functions in the industry. Our purpose is to inform our audience about assessment methods currently employed that are the best predictors of candidate success in the investment space.
Since 1990, our firm has worked on several mandates every year to recruit a capital raising professional for one of our investment management clients. Every search is unique, each client different in culture and size. That said, when hiring a marketer, they all need an individual who has deep relationships and a proven track record of raising capital. Our firm’s task is to determine which candidate’s fund raising prowess provides our client with the best probability of securing allocations for the fund. To that end, we have used a process that employees our network of managers and allocators that we have cultivated over a period of 30 plus years, to answer that very question.
 Our assessment process begins with an overview of the funds the candidate has marketed over the course of their career. We rate the funds on a scale that measures how easy or difficult it was to raise capital for that fund at the time the candidate was marketing it. It is scored using our own quantitative and qualitative process that assigns a value to this first component of our assessment, which is to what degree did the fund effect the candidates capital raising track record.
We then move to the second component of our assessment process and map the allocator universe for the various funds the candidate has sold, and compare that universe to the number of relationships the candidate has in that universe. That provides us with the second value, which is to what degree does the candidate have relationships he/she can monetize.
Lastly we interview the candidate to determine cultural fit. We use a work history behavioral analysis that gauges how well this individual will fit in to our client’s work culture.
Over the decades this process has evolved as each engagement we take on provides us another data point to test the accuracy of our methods, and observe if our assessment model proves itself in a real world fund environment. That is, we track the performance of the people we recruit and continue to update our process on what we learn. As with any endeavor to predict human performance, it needs to be a continual agile process of improvement.

Ground Breaking Indie RIA Platform Provider Dynasty Financial Moving to Florida

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New York based Dynasty Financial Partners, a leader in the indie RIA platform provider space announced yesterday that they are moving their headquarters to St. Petersburg, Florida in the second quarter of 2019. The firm will continue to keep an office in NY, but it appears a large share of the business will now be managed out of the new offices in Florida.

Shirl Penny, the founder and CEO of Dynasty said “We have spent a year looking for an ideal location that provided economic leverage, a high quality of life for our team, a robust infrastructure, and a strong talent pool. We also wanted a location that was in the heart of a thriving and growing financial services market – and St. Petersburg was a stand-out on all fronts,”

The firm is known collectively in the Indie RIA space as a fast-growing technology and service leader serving 47 RIA’s across the US. Which is probably why St. Pete put on a full court press to land the business.

Frequency of Cyber Attacks in Financial Services Firms Increasing

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We all remember the data breach at Equifax two years ago, and the turmoil it created by directly affecting 143m consumers. Well, post-Equifax cyber attacks have increased on financial institutions at an alarming rate. In fact recent data indicates that customers of financial service firms have suffered over 60% more incidents than any other sector. The threat has become so severe that our government passed the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act and The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) specifically to assist in addressing the problem etc. are helping accelerate the adoption of cybersecurity in the financial sector.

We are working with our clients in that space to put together a comprehensive analysis of the cybersecurity market in financial services. Including market drivers, challenges and emerging technologies. We expect to provide the market with a comprehensive report that will give those in the financial markets a roadmap to solution providers. If you wish to participate, please reach out to discuss. Expect to see ongoing updates as our process unfolds.

Jeff, We Hardly Knew Ye

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NYC just got blindsided when Amazon pulled the plug on their proposed NYC campus after a facing a passionate onslaught from progressive leader and their followers who opposed the deal NY had forged with the online giant.

The original announcement by Amazon to build an expansive campus in Queens would have resulted 25,000 jobs for the city. That of course does include the massive ancillary economic benefits that would have accrued to the region by the presence of Amazon. Following Amazon’s announcement, Kathryn S. Wylde, the CEO of the Partnership for New York City reflected the broader sense of disappointment in the decision when she indicated that the treatment of Amazon by progressive leaders sends a “pretty bad message to the job creators” of the city and the world. “How can anyone be surprised?” Ms. Wylde said. “We competed successfully, made a deal and spent the last three months trashing our new partner.”

Amazon has been on the hunt for their 2nd headquarters since September of 2017. 200 different cities courted the company in hopes of securing a commitment from the online giant. They were driven by the need for additional pools of talent and the increasingly sour relationship has with city officials in Seattle. So it should surprise no one that the ferocity, misinformation and outright disdain some NY officials threw at Amazon in recent months, would cause the company to reevaluate whether the Big Apple was the right place for them.

Gianna Cerbone-Teoli owner of Manducatis Rustica, a restaurant a few blocks from the new Amazon site encapsulated the feelings of all working Joes that saw this as an economic boon for the area when speaking to the New York Times she voiced her opinion directly to those who opposed the deal. “I’m really upset because I don’t think they realized what they did,” she said. “And they’re proud of it? They think they did something lovely? They wanted the political gain, they should have done it in a different way. They get put into office for us, not to work for themselves.”

We agree Gianna, and on a larger scale, we think the anti-business drum beats in both our city and our country are antithetical to the well-being of the American dream every working person in America pursues each and every day.

SS&C GlobeOp Hedge Fund Performance Index For January Returns 3.59%

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WINDSOR, Conn., Feb. 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — The gross return of the SS&C GlobeOp Hedge Fund Performance Index for January 2019 measured 3.59%.

Hedge fund flows as measured by the SS&C GlobeOp Capital Movement Index advanced 1.11% in February.

“SS&C GlobeOp’s Capital Movement Index for February 2019 of 1.11% shows increased net flows compared to the 0.96% reported for the same period a year ago for February 2018,” said Bill Stone, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, SS&C Technologies. “In fact, the 1.11% reported for February 2019 represents the largest net inflows for any February since 2013. This favorable result continues the generally positive net flows into hedge funds we’ve seen since market volatility rose abruptly this past October.”

Reflections On Our State of the Union

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Every year in January the President travels down the street from the White House and enters the chambers of the United States House of Representatives to address our lawmakers and the nation on the state of the union. It is quite an affair accompanied by several traditions that have come to define the event. For the most part, the President’s opposing party shows little to no enthusiasm for the annual victory lap the President is prone to take. Nor do they emote much in the way of support for most of his proposed agenda items going forward. This is demonstrated by them withholding applause or standing when he makes a salient point. Of course, those within the President’s own party rise in thunderous applause with his every point.

We all observe this ritual every year from our couch while munching on popcorn. I have always done the same thing, until this year. This year I hopped the train to DC and joined others there to observe, and in various ways participate with the festivities in person. Having a full view sitting right next to the guy running the C-Span camera in the gallery provides a much more expansive view of the dynamic than I had ever experienced before.

This year for instance, the overwhelming sea of white-clothed congresswomen was a sight to behold from the moment they walked in, during their high fives cheers when the President declared that we have more women in Congress now than at any other time in history, and in icy stares when the President turned directly to them and proclaimed America will never be a socialist country.

As interesting as the dynamic in the chambers was the pre and post-game rituals our elected officials participate in on this night. I had the opportunity to spend time with a quite a number of those who run our country during the pre-speech get-togethers in the Capitol leading up the event. I was able to observe how they interacted with each other. How they ribbed each other and threw jokes around like a group of close friends who have been hanging out together for years. It left me with thoughts that there is still hope for our country personified by these people interacting with each other in a civil and respectful manner, as opposed to the massive divide we see characterized by the pundits in our national media. It also made me realize that many of these folks are real characters with unique and charming personas.

Then it was post-speech time, and we proceeded into the National Statuary Hall where we were greeted by a gaggle of television crews, reporters, and radio announcers. All of them seeking commentary from any elected official regarding the speech that just ended. And as they are wont to do when cameras are whirring, our politicians accommodated the press for a few hours. Each one putting their own spin on the President’s speech. Each reflecting the views of themselves and their party in an articulate and well-stated manner. Each with their political game time hat on.

Then time to leave. Once again, people from both sides of the aisle filing out of the Capitol together with a few jokes, jabs and ribs between them. All done in a friendly and collegial way. Home to rest, so they can start a new day tomorrow tackling the issues confronting our country. Yeah, our state of the union is just fine.