We recently hosted an idea dinner on “Disruptive Companies in the Asset Management Industry”. The most attractive industries to disrupt are highly profitable ones, and asset management is traditionally a highly profitable industry. IMHO, the most successful disrupters in this area to date have been Vanguard (who popularized index funds) and the ETF industry. We...
[Continue Reading]On Expert Networks, Compliance, the Drunk and the Lamppost
Expert networks have been in the news a lot for the past few weeks, due to the SEC’s attempt to look for insider trading amongst hedge funds, following on their Galleon investigation (Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon is in the photo shown). The best source of information on this topic is as usual the Integrity Research...
[Continue Reading]Launch of Track.com, a market for independent Wall Street research
Four days ago, a team of Wall Street veterans launched Track.com, a new marketplace for independent research providers. I met with the management team today. Track.com offers independent research providers a platform to distribute their intellectual property. Buyers pay subscriptions for access to the pool of content. Similar to Value Investors Club, the general public...
[Continue Reading]Hedge fund investment patterns/quarterly reports/investment ideas/careers
Yaser Anwar, an unusually aggressive and career-savvy senior at York University, has a mailing list with interesting information about the current status of the markets, with a focus on hedge fund investing. He sends out content about twice a month. If you want to sign up for it, contact him at yaser(at)yaseranwar.com . Despite his...
[Continue Reading]Deal Sourcing by Corporate Development Groups
At last week’s ACG Intergrowth conference, I attended a roundtable discussion on Deal Sourcing as part of the Corporate Development track. My notes follow. To preserve confidentiality, I have labeled as “X:” the comments from all the participants. We had about 30 people in the group, almost all of whom were heads of M&A at...
[Continue Reading]