Grove Street Advisors Case Study
Grove Street Advisors (“GSA”) is a leading fund-of-funds, focused on investing in “low risk” top-tier private equity funds that are not excessively large nor highly levered. GSA is faced with a number of strategic alternatives to help catalyze the firm’s next stage of growth. We propose that GSA expand globally and continue to build expertise in relatively underserved global PE markets such as China and India to help meet its objectives of satisfying customer needs, enhancing its international reputation, staying responsive to trends in private equity, and ultimately maximizing profitability.
When considering GSA’s strategic direction, we should first build an understanding of its relative position within the private equity market. GSA’s current value proposition to its clients is: 1) Greater accessibility to private equity firms through GSA’s customized services, allowing less sophisticated clients to progress from a passive fund-of-funds investor into a direct private equity investor, removing the intermediation between the GP and the client; 2) A strategy of “vintage-year diversification”, whereby GSA contributes to funds over a number of different years in order to gain access to many different types of funds; and 3) A compensation structure that is weighted towards carried interest at the expense of fees, ensuring an alignment of interests between GSA and its clients. These strategies have helped the fund retain large and important
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The Vanguard Group turned 42 years old this year and its mission statement remains the same - To take a stand for all investors, treat them fairly, and give them the best chance for investment success. It pioneered the industry first index fund and is one of the largest asset management companies in the world. Year after year Vanguard dominates in cash flows and client advocacy. Part of its success can be attributed to its unique corporate structure... The Vanguard Group is owned by its funds which are owned by investors, and the board of directors is tasked to commit to the best interests of the clients. With such a great brand recognition and strong foothold in the industry, what are the components in Vanguard 's value chain?
1. How has the Investment Office selected, compensated, and controlled private equity fund managers? What explains the differences between their strategy in private equity with that in other asset classes (e.g., real estate)?
The Yale Endowment is known in the financial industry as a pioneer in using a combination of innovative asset allocation and active management to produce impressive long-term performance. In fact, the Endowment produced a 17.8% average annual return, net of fees, in the ten-year period ending June 30, 2007.1 This performance is particularly impressive given that, in recent years, the Endowment portfolio has carried less than a 40% weighting in equities. Instead, under the leadership of Chief Investment Officer Dave Swensen, the Yale Investments Office
So, Bob can you talk a little bit about what sets Capital Group Private Client Services apart from other wealth managers?
Chuck Whitman is a degree holder in finance from DePaul University. Before the establishment of ICM, he worked as a portfolio executive for quite a few wealth management companies with the main objective of gaining as much awareness and experience about the industry and its operational techniques as possible. This enthusiasm to learn is what has led him to successfully establish two of the most well-known establishments in the country. Under to his excellent supervision, ICM group scored the 4th rank in the Wealth management business sector in
First Farmers Financial, LLC U.S Income Tax Return for an S Corporation, beginning on 8/26/11 and ending on 12/31/11.
Our goal at Donnelly Advisors is simple - find and seed a diversified group of managers who can achieve strong risk-adjusted returns through a scalable strategy. We have built out a lengthy due diligence process to filter down hundreds of prospective managers to those ripe for growth. We also believe that by investing alongside our partners proves our commitment to our thesis.
1. Adams espouses a “market first” analysis of opportunity by looking for discontinuities. Is this substantive or window-dressing? Do the four types of discontinuities represent applicable guidelines? Are they comprehensive, or are there other discontinuity templates that a venture investor would find useful?
They have a global structure to ensure satisfaction with strategic and financing needs of clients around the world. In the institutional client services segment they facilitate client transactions and make markets in fixed income, equity, currency and commodity products—primarily with institutional clients (GS). In addition to this they make markets and clear client transactions on major stock options and futures exchanges worldwide, provide financing, securities lending and prime brokerage services (GS). Although revenues from these activities are decreasing it is still by far the greatest source of their revenue (GS).
The historic average returns from 1950 to 1996 and from 1929 to 1996 are given In Exhibit 3. We chose the latter time period as we considered it would give us a more reliable estimate of the risk-free rate by discounting both the Second World War and the Great Depression. It is necessary to evaluate the expected length of the project and utilize a risk free rate applicable for the same time period. Ameritrade is investing $100 million dollars in technology, which is considered a long-term investment, in order to become the largest brokerage firm. We consider their
Yale’s investment philosophy is one of the critical factors that played into the success of the fund’s performance in the past years. The philosophy is based on 5 principles: focus on equity, diversification, opportunities in inefficient markets, outside managers and alignment of manager’s incentives with Yale’s interests. In the paragraphs below I will discuss how each of these principles is reflected in the endowment’s asset allocation, as shown from Exhibit 1.
Kotler & Keller (2012) explored the obligation to be customer centric and mature together with clients. Group Capital strives to deliver these values to our distinct constituency due to securities industry regulations. They conducted a Prizm segment explorer to understand better the makeup and characteristics of their target market. Group
Aberdeen Asset Management plc (for the purpose of this report I will refer to the company as Aberdeen) is an international investment management group that manages assets for third parties; institutions and individuals (p.2, MarketLine Company Profile, 2015). Aberdeen is an extremely large firm and results from the last financial year showed net revenue of £1,117.6m and a pre-tax profit of £324.4m (p.1, Final Results 2014, AAM Plc). The group employs over 2,600 members of staff, in 33 offices across 25 different countries around the world, with its headquarters based in Aberdeen, Scotland (p.4, MarketLine Company Profile, 2015). The company has seen rapid growth since it was founded in 1983 through acquisitions and internal growth. In 1991 it began floating on the London Stock Exchange under the name Aberdeen Trust PLC (p.5, MarketLine Company Profile, 2014). Fig. 2 shows how the success of the company is reflected in its increasing share price since floatation, earning it a place in the coveted FTSE 100 Index in 2012 (Our History, aberdeen_asset.co.uk). The firm is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FSA) in the United Kingdom jurisdiction. Aberdeen is a public limited company (plc) which means it has limited liability and its shares may be freely sold and traded by the public, Fig 2 shows the fluctuation of the share price in recent years. The current market capitalisation of Aberdeen, which is calculated
Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE:BX)’s size does provide a competitive advantage that could transform to sustainable growth over a longer period of time. Larger alternative asset managers have been the recipients of a tendency to consolidate assets, which is expected to continue onward. Blackstone 's 2-and-20 fee structures on assets under management give it significant operating leverage, and allow it to support excellent margins among rapid growth. Blackstone is the leading option for many pension funds, endowments, family offices, etc. Having the “Blackstone” brand name as a leading competitive advantage.