How To Spot & Grow a World Class Opportunity

[Music] good morning uh and welcome sander Rishi and Casey uh we have a vast topic and 20 minutes to explore so let's get straight into into it uh let me start from you Rashid uh what does a world class opportunity really mean to you and how do you go about about finding such investment opportunities like some of the key elements that you look for to identify those opportunities sure let me let me start off by seeking some forgiveness over here from the crowd because I'm going to replace one word word in that sentence instead of world class I'm going to say best-in-class opportunity and the reason for that is whenever we talk about world class the Mind automatically defaults to thinking about a global business which is operating in 192 countries and and so on and so forth actually you don't need to go that far right best-in-class opportunities and investing in them is really all about five key factors first and foremost is is that business positioned to benefit from some of the secular Tailwinds that we are facing as we think about not just the next 3 days or 3 months or 3 years but the next three decades right and those secular Tailwinds I think are well known to us it's all about digitization including AI of course of course it's all about health and wellness aging demography the energy transition and so on right second is is that business does it have a strong sustainable and differentiated value proposition in terms of either the quality of its product or Services the cost the price point the performance whatever it is maybe a combination of all of those but it is it strong and sustainable over that uh Horizon third is does the business naturally lend itself to expansion into natural adjacencies either in terms of geographies markets or in terms of products and importantly is it portable into those adjacencies is it set up to be transported into those adjacencies fourth is is the business able to benefit from scale right is their inherent operating leverage built into the business such that whilst being being sustainable it can actually improve margins and returns to owners and shareholders the last point is actually the most important one here Nishan typically people talk about it in two terms I'm going to combine it into one and it's all about people and culture because that people and culture equation is a self-reinforcing equation starting from the leadership the leadership defines the culture the people Embrace that culture if they embody that culture and they are able to develop their own troops progressively through the cycle of that business such as such so as to create the future leadership that self-reinforcing Loop is is a very important consideration so those five factors really for us whether it's for invest Corp or the businesses we invest in sure they Define uh best-in-class opportunity thank you thank you Rashi let me come uh to uh Casey you have an interesting company you originated from China and then expand Ed globally can you take us through your journey uh briefly uh and also what were the key lessons learned during the process yeah sure first of all I really want to Anchor Aisha's philosophy on the five principles I think that can apply universally too for a lot of businesses so I came from a Consulting background right now and then leading this company of its strategy so so wind is uh right now one of the largest player in Asia in the financial information sector provided Technology Solutions as Management Solutions to everyone in financial ecosystem so there are a lot of pivotal points and key decisions that we we need to make the founders need to make when when he grow the business the first and foremost principle that we have is always follow the market opportunities follow the capital follow the client needs uh following client's needs and identify that even sometimes stay beh ahead of that is very critical the second philosophy is on uh creating the Innovative structure infrastructure so on the market question that you asked about where to start with is the very first question that we think about so China that we pick as our whole Market to start with 30 years ago was a very nent stage so if you look at the market growth from in 1990s at the capital markets Grew From 170 million of market cap US dollar to today 21 trillion US market dollar and also in the bond market that time was 17 billion doll to today 24 trillion us so that is the one way that we looking at and we made decision 30 years ago to start and focus on this company uh the main markets to be in in China and grow together with that and later on 15 years ago there is another pivotal point that we think about globalization and that was driven by the capital markets open up of China so on one end we see a lot of Chinese International firms and financial institutions open up their overseas forth prints and on the other hand all the International Players investors are also trying to tap into the high growth of China so that was a critical decision where we decided to expand our Geographic Footprints expand our Global Information coverage and today outside mland China we have 10 offices covered in Asia North America and Europe and on the information side we double our information coverage globally year overy year on all the equity classes um as well as the bonds and ficc in this um IND thees secture and we also built a worldclass macroeconomic database covering over 200 countries region so these are the key decisions that we made together with the capital movements uh we stay ahead of client needs and also on the technology infrastructure wise we stay namble in deploy the latest technology to make it a more productive um investment support for a lot of our clients fantastic thanks thanks so much for your Insight uh now let me go to sander you have probably one of the most exciting and interesting seat as the founder of one of the leading multistat hedge funds in the world that space has seen explosive growth how do you go about building a multi Strat which is a very tough business the fight for talent the fight for cash is intense how do you go about building one well thank you it's a great pleasure to be here in Abu Dhabi a multistat is an operation it's it's an operating business and I believe there's three key points to building an operating business yeah the first is values values determine the value of an organization MH and the ability of that organization to grow so although I agree with Rishi regarding the aspect of culture we don't call it culture we call it environment because we want many different cultures in our organization we don't want one corporate culture so our values are defined by three points the first is we want to promote independent thinking we want people to question the experts I wrote a piece about in the Wall Street Journal about 3 weeks ago the second is we want to Foster collaboration so we work to develop processes within our organization to enable across the multi Strat all our areas to come together to share experiences to better structure the Investments that we make and the third value is to respect the individual if you can't respect other people within your organization you won't build a sustainable organization so that's the first point the second point is you need an operational framework people when they work together they need to have a common idea of how things should be fit together so we call it the deal code framework and that is able to unify our investment Talent our accounting Talent our finance invest relations compliance everyone is structure around this deal code framework so it provides an operational infrastructure for us to coales around and the third aspect as Rishi mentioned also is you got to find the right people that's to me is very hard yeah I interview everyone who comes into our organization down to the receptionist uh usually they go through five or six rounds before they come to me I used to reject 20% now it's down to 10% of the people um but we want people who are going to be able to fit into our environment and that's the way I think that you build sustainability yeah fantastic yeah let's take to you uh on the next question uh and talk about this region uh hedge funds are obviously making a belind for UAE uh over the last two days I have heard all sort of reasons uh taxes you know Sun soaked beaches safety lifestyle uh but these things were there forever right why now and the second part of the question is are we at sort of an inflection point for UA right now given the whole ecosystem is really in the place it seems right now well UAE is really the unicorn of asset enhancement because they're intentional with the way that they're building the uh future for their people M and Arab Hospitality in the world is unparalleled and combining that with a shared respect and tolerance for uh values from other peoples is what's giving people the confidence to come here UE has shown tremendous leadership in the region and I think that all of us should really support that um continued leadership that they've shown yeah yeah Rishi uh we were just talking and you told told me that you have spent 32 long years in this region uh you must have seen everything that needs to be seen here uh so why now well so well I'm a Ki at at the end of the day um um and I think what is happening now Nishant is the building blocks right which starts with creating the right environment the environment in turn attracts the right people and then combin combining the people and the environment with capital and opportunities creates that ecosystem right all of that has now taken hold very firmly it it takes time to build that Foundation you don't throw a switch overnight and expect it to to happen and the leadership not just in the UAE broadly speaking in the GCC region the the new generation of leadership has been very forward-looking they form 20 30e Visions you know several years ago almost decades ago and they have been systematically executing upon that multi- deade vision and that Vision now is manifesting itself in terms of tangible outcomes because the environment is there the people are coming following that environment the capital was always there it was being exported now it's being deployed locally and the opportunities set has not just expanded it's exploded right in the last four years alone the number of small and mediumsized businesses in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has grown by 140% yeah right 140% so imagine what that means for people like invest Corp that are in the business of deploying private investment Capital right the opportunity opportunity set is huge and it just creates a self-reinforcing loop a virtual cycle almost Absolutely I'll come back to that question briefly uh Casey do you have any any thoughts on on that right now for this region how do you find this region yeah so so so for us on the on on the regional topic so we are in this information business so we believe that so over the past five years there has been in increased connectivities between the minor region and the Asia the East the east region so but things could not happen magically so information needs to go first information sharing is very important I've heard many times from the investor on this side and the investor on that side trying to understand each other but they could find no access to to the relevant information and relevant counterparty so for us to play a role is to be the information Bridge um across the regions and globally and we do want it to be the underlying Powerhouse and infrastructure what we call Capital Market infrastructure to facilitate whatever transactions invest educations Market opportunities to make things happen yeah great you know this may be more from liquid investment strategies point of view but if we look at at the history of any Financial Center the key ingredient is whether how deep is the market can you really invest can you get in and get out of those markets so if you see this region from that perspective uh obviously you can invest from UAE can you invest in UA and where are we in that development uh stage sander well the UA is making uh mendous initiatives in the field of AI uh and other forward-looking Technologies and the challenge here is to bring in the Personnel that can accomplish uh that change and the leadership here understands that and so to make investments here you really have to be local and I think that's why we're all here is because the leadership wants us to come and be local yeah brish yeah and I I was going to quibble with you a little bit Nishan because you know it's important for liquid strategies yes it's even more important for illiquid strategies because imagine how investors would feel if we put their money into liquid Investments and never you know manag to to take them out so we need that liquidity right and and what I see as being very encouraging is the increasing number of Market participants coming into the UAE and the region wanting to participate in private Market investment opportunities because that creates that liquidity right that pool of capital that ecosystem of buyers and sellers around investment opportunities that are growing in number every day we speak you know that in itself is very very promising and so I think what needed to happen to ensure the availability of that monetization exit event for a liquid Investments is largely beginning to happen now yeah sure very briefly we have uh 90 seconds left like what's the next big thing for you uh globally or region yeah I think the next big thing for us is is on the Technology Innovation is on AI you cannot join any panels today without talking about that but we're talking about real application so I believe I came from Investment Banking background and I couldn't imagine how the world is so different today than 10 years ago in in the sector so with AI it enhanced the productivity so what we do is uh Finance sector is very challenging for zero margin of error for the the real time access to information no hallucination ability to reason all of these challenges but with the latest technology that we come up with um the the latest uh AI powered Financial terminal so that helps the research analyst in a day to digest all the earnings cost with the structured and unstructured information that that can flow directly into your model we help analysts to automatically update the model as as soon as an earnings announcement come out we can also come up with some of the um the outlines for the research report and finding the underlying materials and grounds to build into that so there is a tons of mantion and an application that can be applied in the sector where we want to change the future 5 to 10 years of how AI can be leveraged by Financial professionals thank you thank you uh Rishi what's the next big thing for your firm so look we are we are today a large Diversified Global manager focused on private Investments our Focus going forward is to deliver both on the promise and the potential of what we are yeah sure Sandra anything a credit yeah credit is is um going through dramatic change in the current environment particularly changes in the US banking system something that's dramatically underdeveloped in this region of the world from Saudi the Emirates is the credit markets here and the ability to provide credit is the foundation for growing in economy and I think that's one of the most exciting areas to be in in the region yeah on that note we have run out of time thank you so much for your time and thoughts thank you [Applause] [Music] what