October 13, 2025 • 40 mins
In this episode, Anthony is joined by Marc Bergeron, a veteran of nearly four decades in finance, from bond trading in the '80s to co-founding his own firm and now championing mentorship at Orchard Global, a leading alternative investment manager.
Marc shares real stories about navigating market crashes, learning the hard way about soft skills, and why adaptability and resilience are make-or-break traits in today’s finance world.
Whether you're a student wondering where to start or a young professional trying to find your edge, Marc's journey offers invaluable insights (and a few hard-won lessons) to help you grow and thrive in the industry.
(00:00) Intro & Guest Intro
(01:31) From Engineering to Finance
(03:39) Life on the ’80s Trading Floor
(07:33) Starting a Finance Firm
(14:54) Entrepreneurial Mindset
(14:29) Soft Skills in Finance
(17:10) Resilience & Adaptability
(24:06) Mentoring & Continuous Learning
(31:17) Organisational Resilience
(34:06) Biggest Lessons & Regrets
(38:22) One Book You Should Read
(42:00) Final Thoughts & Warwick Event
*****
Register for the EVENT on campus at the University of Warwick on Thursday, 29th October (6-8pm).
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome back to the Market Maker Podcast.
And today I'm joined by Mark Bergeron, A founding member of
Orchard Global's predecessor company, which is now a leading
alternative investment manager with over $9 billion in assets
under management. With nearly 40 years in finance,
Mark has wore many hats from trader to entrepreneur to
(00:20):
President and Global Head of Sustainability.
As he begins his transition toward retirement, Mark is
leading the development of a newinternal program at Orchard
focused on talent development and mentorship, an area he is
deeply passionate about. South.
In this conversation, we're going to dive into his journey,
the soft skills that matter the most, and the lessons he wants
(00:41):
next generation of finance professionals to carry forward.
So Mark, how are you? Good.
Good yourself. Thank you, Anthony, for having
me. It's great.
It's a it's a pleasure to have you.
How does it sound when I say 40 years in finance?
How does? How does that feel?
37 I'm turning, turning a big number this year.
(01:04):
I've told everybody, don't call me, please.
Next year, we can celebrate. Now it's amazing and I'm sure
there's going to be so many great insights to come here.
So perhaps then you could tell us a little bit about about that
background. So going all the way back to a
large proportion of our audienceare in there early careers or
possibly even a student thinkingabout their career in finance.
(01:25):
So what did it look like back then for you going from study
and those first steps into finance?
Well, I'll, I'll take even one step further back than this.
Full disclosure is I was a a a afailed electrical engineer.
When I say fail, I didn't mean failing the classes because I
was passing, but I just hated itwith a passion.
(01:46):
And the goal is all had always been to get my engineering
degree, work two years, then go to an MBA and doing finance.
So being math oriented, basically, I just made the when
I realized how much I I hated engineering, I just made the
leap straight into finance. That's where I feel at the time
anyway, I was feeling really good, you know, with regards to
(02:07):
numbers and everything. But the the interesting thing is
I started my career in 88 and those might remember that in 87,
we had a little bit of a hiccup in the market.
I had thought that I wanted to go into investment banking and
our teachers in school in 87th as kids think of something else.
(02:28):
Literally for the next few years, I saw an ad for somebody
to work in fixed income trading,bond trading.
And to be honest, back then university did not prepared us
very well for the bond market. I knew that yield and price were
inversely related. And that was about it, like
literally. And then my first interview, I
(02:49):
guess The Who became my, the person who hired me, look at me
and says, well, I guess you don't know much about the bond
market, do you? He says that it's, you know, X
time. I don't know if it was 10 time
back then the, the 10 or 20 timebigger than the equity market,
because all you heard back then was the equity market.
You know, you turn on CNBC equity, equity, equity and then,
you know, there's a big world out there on the bond market.
(03:10):
So basically I, I became an accidental bond trader and it
suited me. Loved it.
You quickly learned that, you know, to be into trading itself,
all those economics course you took, you know, they have great
value and everything, but that'snot how the market work on a
short term basis. And somebody used to love to
(03:31):
remind that the market can remain at a crazy level longer
than you can remain solvent in your trading book.
So I learned pretty quickly to, you know, let go a little bit on
of all those theories and just, you know, just just follow the
market, which I guess in the long run is not something I
really wanted to do. There's a fair amount of, I'm
not going to lie to people thinkabout that.
There's a fair amount of stress into that, that business.
(03:53):
And it's unlike investment banking or even performing.
It's not like short term stress.And then, you know, I mean,
there are times where the market's not moving much, but
there are times that it's, it's,it's it, it doesn't leave you
like you're, you're, you're not a day trader as a bond trader.
Usually you, you, you know, you go to bed with positions on your
(04:14):
book. Something can happen in the
oversea market overnight and youwake up, you come in the next
morning or you, or worse, you'vehad a lot of phone calls middle
of the night. And, you know, try to back then,
there was no phone with, you know, the BlackBerry was so
basic. There was no, you know, we
couldn't even if we turn on our computer, we couldn't get access
to Bloomberg anything like this.You had to ask her what is U.S.
Treasury doing and everything? So I was a little being in the
(04:36):
dark, but I was, you know, baptism by fire.
You learned a lot on, on on the job.
And that's, you know, that's howwe, that's how you survive,
basically. There was finance was known back
then and maybe still a little bit nowadays, but you know,
training desk were a brutal place to, to, to grow up, as I
(04:59):
call it. Probably there was 0 training on
HR on how to deal with people. It was, you know, stapler across
the head and, you know, go get me a bagel.
And, you know, lots of insult and lots of putting down and
lots of lots of swearing. But you are to, you know, you
had to learn not to get that bother you too much.
Those who learned to do this didwell, those who didn't have to
(05:22):
find job somewhere else in a hurry.
But the way I look at it, you know, since then I look at it as
there was great formation for mebecause if you can survive this,
you know, I remember the gentleman I was asked to, that
was, I was hard to, to replace the gentleman British guy and
make sure that was retiring. So at some .2 months into the
(05:44):
war, I was just out of my wits, stressed out.
And you know, I remember that hetook me out for lunch and I told
him as Mr. Caress said, I, I don't know how you how.
And he was a calm, very calm person.
And I don't know how you can deal with that.
And it was well known that Mister Kerr had been in the
British regiment. And he told me very calmly, the
sun when you have bullets flyingleft, right and center view,
it's not a little ball market action that's going to.
(06:06):
And I looked at him and said, I'm sorry, Sir, but I'm not add
bullets flying next to me. So I'm, I'm learning.
And he goes does don't take it personally.
Your personal software is not tied to your PNL that day.
So, you know, those are two different things in the long
run. Well, if you're not good PNLS,
you have to find another job or you're being asked to find
another job but in a but it's not, you know, it's not you try
(06:27):
not to have that. Take a value of who you are as a
person, basically. So how long did that, that
particular part of the career last for then in the end?
Oh, oh God. ADA 2, ADA 296-9697.
I thought that I was getting so good at that, you know, why
would I trade another firm's capital?
(06:49):
And I'll trade my own firm and my own capital.
And I did bonds and FX, which was I understood.
And then I made the payroll mistake of thinking that all of
those way I can trade. Why not look at commodities, You
know, they move a lot. So you know, and you've learned
(07:11):
very quickly during the, I think97 was the Russian crisis and
soybean crash. And you learned that market is
limit down. And what that means is like the
market opens, hits the limit, nobody can trade, see you
tomorrow opens limit down again.And so the concept of, oh, I had
my stops here and there and you know, doesn't happen.
I mean, commodities are not as liquid as the S&P 500 or as
(07:34):
bonds. And even those markets can have
gaps someday, but you have severe gaps in commodities.
So that was the end of that. And then I, I thought that I
could use all the skills I had in fixed income and cash market
and probably that into a bit of derivative I looked at.
And so I started working at Bankers Trust with was, you
(07:54):
know, a derivative shop mostly where you learn it was it was,
you know, an extremely interesting place to work
because you could be creative. That was passed bankers shot out
of hiccups themselves. But after that, you know, you
could do equity derivative, fixed income derivative, you
(08:14):
name it. And you know, it was really fine
problem solving. You spoke to a corporate client
or you spoke to pension fund andthey say, well, you know, I'd
like to do this or that. And then you say, OK, let's try
to create an instrument that canhelp you achieve your goal given
your market view. So that was super interesting.
So I did that. Then we got bought by Deutsche
(08:35):
Bank and I did that till 2001 and that's when I left that Co
founded New Shore which became Orchard which is where I am
retiring from today. Love that that empire is
actually like a a huge company in many several years.
So yeah, there was let's unpack some of that in particular,
because you know, one of the things that I think is really
(08:57):
interesting is that you start inthese places where you know, you
a big company, you've got accessto intelligence and people
network and clients, things likethat.
So as you progress and get more senior, obviously they they do,
I think those big companies quite a good job at trying to
make you that this is the place to be and you know, this is the
(09:18):
seat to have. So taking that leap then to go
and start your own firm. I just would be interested to
unpack of what, what motivated you.
Is it just that is that process you just explained being able to
really work on core problems with good clients?
If I was dishonest, I could tellyou that it's after reflecting
and seeing a total business opportunity and everything,
(09:40):
blah, blah that, but that's not really what happened.
Reality was that the element of office politics came in
massively, which is something I was not used to, which something
I hated because probably becauseI was really poor at it or I'm
poor at it because I hated it. I don't know, but started to
really, really dislike what I was doing.
(10:01):
So we saw an opportunity, we went, we talked to the rating
agency, and then we had to do the leap.
And the leap was we had everything lined up, but we
could not have the proof of concept yet, but everything was
lined up. But it despite having the rating
(10:21):
and she says saying, yes, go ahead.
If you bring this, that's going to work.
Then having commercial paper dealers saying, yeah, if you
create this, this, this trust orthis vehicle, we'd like to issue
your paper despite you have all of this and suddenly go like,
wow, I'm starting with nothing. But at some point we just, you
know, it's almost like, I don't know, taking a deep breath and
jumping into the in the lake or or the pool and hoping you can
(10:45):
swim. But literally when we first
started, we rented off a space of a friend of mine who tried to
get a hedge fund going did not work.
We're hoping that I wasn't a curse, but so we rented
something when we paid them off over time of all the furniture
and there was just two of us. And then we hired a young lady
who was receptionist, secretary,accountant, IT person, you name
(11:09):
it. So it, it, you know, it was very
different. But I, I can't really recall
having difficulty adapting when I was at banker stress.
I was told that I found out later on because I used to make,
you know, they told me, OK, we have to go pitch to such a
corporate or, or pension fund. I'd make my own presentation.
(11:30):
So just the way I was used to working.
I did not find it to be a big, abig challenge, but I do, I do
remember fondly colleague friends of us who came and join
us and you know, for the three of us then.
And, and then my new colleague asked me who was our Courier
company. And I said, well, what do you
mean? He says, well, you know, if we
(11:51):
need to send a letter, but, or package, I said, where, where
does it have to go when it was literally 2 blocks away?
And I said, OK, why don't you walk there?
Because, you know, Deutsche Bank, you give it to your PA and
the PA gives it to the company'sdedicated, you know, you don't
have this as a small company. But that was not a, that was not
a, that was not hard for me to because I, I don't know, that
(12:13):
felt more natural for me than a big company.
And I guess, you know, there aredifferent personalities that are
suitable for each one of them. And that's something that, you
know, I'm being asked a lot about that from young people in
university. You know, should I go to Goldman
Sachs or should I go to And you know, there's no right or wrong
(12:33):
answer, but there's there's definitely the wrong personality
for the wrong side of that equation.
Looking back in retrospect then that entrepreneurialism, so
seeing the uncertainty almost asopportunity rather than the
safety of the clarity that a bigfirm gives you.
Can you connect the dots to anything within your life
(12:54):
experience when you were youngerthat would have given you that
that that appetite on that risk perspective, do you think?
I'm getting fullest over here. When when my colleague and I
started our our we had put out the the threshold was fairly
low. We were so fed up.
We said like if we can replace our base salary and earn enough
(13:17):
money to pay ourselves a little bonus, we're good.
Like that was literally the goalfor the first year or two is
like replace what you add and then very quickly ran out.
OK, well, that's kind of silly to have taken all that risk to
only and then you can see all that, that, you know, you're
free to see different opportunity and to grow the
business. But in terms of of what I mean,
(13:38):
my my dad worked, my dad was an accountant.
He had his own firm. His office was in our house
basement and has separate entry and everything back in Montreal.
And I guess I saw him as I neverthought of my dad as an
entrepreneur. I just thought that he were for
himself. But I guess that must have run
something in the back of my headthat, you know, she don't want
(14:00):
to deal with all the office politics, everything.
Then, you know, I mean, the you exchange a set of problems for
another, but still you don't youknow, that's something you don't
have to deal with. And in the end of you know what
you know what makes you happy inlife and what makes you happy at
work. And as, as, as easy to say,
you'll think about if, if you know, if you really love what
(14:21):
you do, it doesn't feel like work it it truly doesn't.
And if what you like is a big firm, that's great.
And you'll, you know, you won't mind putting in the big hours
because it won't feel that bad. Same thing, all the issues with
being a smaller company. You, you won't, they won't
bother you too much because you like what you're doing.
And if you can even love it, that's even better.
Cool. Well, let's let's move forward
(14:43):
to, to talk about, you know, when we met up, you were very
passionate about this new kind of role you're taking on as a
consultant with Orchard, which is about talent development and
mentorship. And so couple of questions here
about soft skills in particular and advice just generally for
for young people. So my first one here is about
you. You spoke to me about the
importance of adaptability and resilience.
(15:04):
So what are those skills look like when someone's starting out
and in practice for you? OK.
Let's start with resilience first, and that's maybe a bit
more touchy. I think it's something that
young people need to develop andit's probably something that the
younger generation, to be honest, doesn't have as much as
(15:25):
us. But in fairness, our parents
probably thought that we didn't have the same Brazilians that
they did. And their parents thought that,
you know, So when you put it together, we went from, in some
instances from having a generation that had to grow
their own food in this batch of their own food to the social
media generation in three, threeor four, I mean, in really,
really short time. So, so things are very are very
different, but resilience is being told on the entrepreneur
(15:49):
side is to being told no, you know, you got this great idea,
it's not working or, or you know, even though you, you bind
your heart, you think that this would be the greatest thing for
this client to do, but they justdon't see it the same way as you
do it. So you have a no resilience is
having your superior tell you that either diplomatically or
not diplomatically that your work is not good and has to be
(16:10):
redone. Resilience is trying to convey a
message and you're running a lotof trouble, you know, exactly
putting either in writing or in a presentation.
What, what, what you know. And you, you have to keep at it.
You have to keep at it. You're going to present that to
one group and you see the rise rolls and nobody understand what
you're trying to say. Then you got go back and go, OK,
(16:32):
don't take it personally. Got to redo it.
So resilience is, is, is moving forward despite being said no,
despite being saying it's not good enough, despite somebody
maybe tell you, yeah, we don't really care about doing it that
way. It's, you know, develop a
slightly thicker skin a little bit in that you have to
(16:54):
depersonalize that you, you know, a lot of people see 100%
of their work as equate up to 100% of their own personal
value. I mean, there's a huge overlap.
I'm not a psychologist and I know it's huge, but it's not
100. It's not because you did do
something, you know, wrong or wasn't great that you can't do
it better. But The thing is, if, if, if, if
(17:16):
you let that get to you, it's going to take you a while to,
you know, give your head a shakeand go, all right, let's redo
it. Let's say, how do I do it
better? How who can help me do it
better? So resilience is, is to to move
forward. You know, I have to move forward
and not sit there and, you know,lick your wounds for too long.
(17:37):
Adaptability is, is, is, is, is,is once you need to get out of a
bad situation or, or or you know, you can be as resilient as
well, but at some point you knowyou can't do the same thing and
expect different results, right?So adaptability might be the
market moved. You know, you can have the best
ideas if you're a trader or if you're a structure or if you're,
(17:58):
you know, or you want to create a new fund if you take too long,
maybe that was a brilliant idea six months ago.
It's not The market is moving. The economy is moving,
especially not with a is. I don't even want to think how
quickly things are moving right now.
If you can't adapt or you know you're, you're dead in the
(18:20):
water. Aptability could be also in your
own career evolved change or even move up promotion or
lateral or change position or change.
A company we work for and our new, new superior is wildly
different than the previous one.And you can't interact the same
way. And if you try to keep just
doing the same thing, you find out that maybe they don't
appreciate the way you work. You need to adapt to different
(18:42):
people. And sometime it could be you
work for two departments, you know, you, you, you, you need to
do and then they're wildly different.
So you, you, you know, adaptability clients, you go and
you, you pitch a certain way to certain people if you're into
the marketing side, but you got to understand that different
clients react different way. But even sometime you, you might
be brought on as the analyst in a meeting with 10 people from a
(19:06):
big bank or something. And then to to help present and
you need to read room. You have to to be quick and,
and, and OK, what you know, the way in your head you had
rehearsed something and all of asudden you might realize this is
going to fall flat if I delivered my message the same
way. So pivot, change, change
something quickly. So basically adaptability has to
(19:28):
be big because, you know, I think the days of you did
something one way and five yearslater you're still doing it the
same way. I really can't see that
happening. And and it's it's, it's not
something just for young people.Like I recently I signed up and
I and I and I did a six week course on AI because for people
(19:50):
a bit older, we had a joke aboutthe VHS flashing 12, which was
what your parents had AVHS and couldn't program it as they and
it kept flashing 12:00, which meant it wasn't programmed and
they couldn't do you know, it was kind of a running joke of
people, my generation laughing at our parents saying, oh, look,
their VHS still flash 12. I'm way I feel like I had become
my parent. You know, I'd heard about it.
(20:13):
I was like, what do you do without?
I know what chat you be, but what do you really do with that?
And basically I was like, well, you know, I know I am going to
retirement, but you know, it sounds like I'm going to stop
working tomorrow morning and adaptability.
All right, sign up and and then,you know, understand that better
because otherwise the world is going to pass you by.
I, I was really scared of not understanding and the market
(20:35):
and, and work and the way we work, the way we interact with
one or being influenced by usingAI, moving in a way that I would
understand what was going on. So you know, you have to, you
have to adapt. And those are, you're right,
those are soft skills. You can be the best sure credit
analyst so you can do the best reports and, and find numbers.
(20:56):
Nobody can and dig information. Nobody can.
But you have to deliver the information and you have to deal
with people around you and you need help.
And the soft skills come in whenyou need, when you're asking for
help in your company. You know, every company has
people that have a way of askingthat everybody else will bend
over backward to help them. And there's other people that
they're, let's say, less willingto do.
(21:18):
So you want to be the one that people bend over backward to
help. So, you know, those are, you
know, those are the soft skill that are really important.
And I mean, we can call them life skill.
I guess it's not necessarily being taught in university or
anywhere for that matter, unlessyou kind of decide to develop
or, or you have a mentor, which I, I looking back, I did have a
(21:42):
bit of a mentor, but it was morethis is the market you should be
going. This is like, it was kind of
more guiding my career, but in terms of how to interact with,
you know, never did that. And then two years ago I worked
with an executive coach and you know, again, you're never too
old to learn. And it's, you know, you have to
adapt, you have to learn, you have to develop soft skills.
(22:07):
Sometime you might think you have the soft skills and then
somebody else that isn't the best of coaching goes like
starts laughing or you think so really, right.
So maybe you might consider doing this this way or that way.
So I mean, I think these are very, very, very important.
And people out of university arereally focused on the technical
(22:30):
aspect of what they do, which which obviously they they need
to and they should, but they should do.
It doesn't take a lot of time topause and wonder if they're
asking for assistance, if they're not receiving it, they
what are they doing right? Or if I don't know their
colleagues not treating them well, what are they doing right
or wrong or, you know, same thing.
So I think those are very, very important.
It's not being taught much. And I think that's why the
(22:55):
program we're developing, the mentoring aspect of it.
I'm looking forward to that because, because the way I'm
thinking about it go, I wish I had somebody telling me this,
you know, when I was younger andI was like, well, you know, why
don't I be the person now telling them or, or suggesting
or guiding them, or I mean, obviously don't want to give too
many answers right away. You want them to find the answer
to themselves. But you know, guiding them a
(23:16):
little bit, I think would be great because I think we, we got
on to this Anthony, when, when, where the coffee was my view.
And I'm like get a lot of Flack for that.
But my view that trading best trading firms, investment bank,
fund managers, generally speaking, I'll tone it down, but
(23:37):
I'll say you're not necessarily good managers of talent because
mostly people get promoted basedon PNL.
How much money they brought in. If you're into marketing, how
much money, how many clients yousign up or however your firm
works. If you're a trader, how much
money have you made? It's all driven by PNL usually.
(23:57):
And people who are good at generating PNL can be good
manager of people, but not necessarily.
And I think what happened a lot of times is you'll find that a
personalities that get somebody to be a bit more mercurial, to
be more warrior like and take noprison at all.
All that, you know, attitude that some people have, they're
(24:18):
great to get. They don't play well in the
sand. The sandbox with other
necessarily results in great PNL.
But you put somebody with that mindset in charge of a group of
individual and it's chaos. And I've seen it firms, I work,
I've seen it that friends firm. I still see it, you know,
grabbing a coffee or lunch with somebody as a nine, you know,
(24:39):
they're they're they're downloading how mad they are at
their work and what's happening there.
And you see that, you know, all over.
So, you know, we're not a we don't tend to be a business
where I don't mean just fund managers, I mean literally
banks, investment banks. And then like, we don't tend to
develop people until they're very, very high level.
(25:01):
So when people are, you know, approaching, you know, C-Suite
or, or directorship or somethingvery senior, then the company
starts to think, oh, well, maybeexecutive coke Stam and, you
know, and all this. But otherwise, whereas other for
my wife used to work in a pharmaindustry and they spend weeks at
(25:23):
seminars where they, you know, they're trying to coach people
on on on management skills, basically, or people management
skill and end up like in terms of in marketing or sales, they
won't necessarily put maybe to sell the best salesperson needs
to be left as a salesperson and putting them in charge of other
people is gonna get the revenue down because and they may not be
(25:44):
able, they may not be good enough in manager of people to
bring everybody else up as much of what they're down because
they're not selling 24/7. So, you know, maybe you put
somebody who's not the best salesperson, but is more
organized, better communicator and, you know, who cares?
(26:06):
That person is not the most profitable salesperson.
The, the firm is going to profitprobably more by putting
somebody like this, putting really the best person who is
the manager of people and not necessarily the, you know, the
best marketer is not necessarilythe best mark, the the best head
of marketing. So I think that that's something
I'm really excited is, is, is to, you know, for a number of
(26:29):
funds, I sat back and, and, and been unhappy about the way
things are, things were. Now I can, you know, influence
it and, and try to, you know, I'd like to think with all our
recruits that I, I will be an unbiased person for them.
I've done all I've done a lot ofthe, as you mentioned, I've done
a lot of of, of the work at Orchard.
(26:49):
I've, I've worked in pretty muchevery department except invest
and instead investment and credit analysis, but I've done
pretty much everything else. So I understand how the
department work, You know, I don't have preference into any
department. And I think for, you know,
somebody to be able to, to ask, you know, say, hey, you know,
I'm having a little bit a littlebit of trouble knowing that it's
(27:09):
not it's not going to go to their superior and and you don't
bite them back. I think it's it's useful.
And I think, you know that that's I will have I have that
trust with people. I've worked for a long time.
I'm going to need to try to get it very quickly with those young
people. And I think just sitting down
and listening. And I already I've done that
(27:31):
twice this summer with our summer intern.
Sit down, just grab them for lunch.
Hey, let's go and have lunch. How's it going?
And, you know, not with the headof their desk.
And I think they, you know, they, hopefully they, they
thought that they knew that I was not there just to spy back
to, but try to really see how they were doing and give them
advice and everything. And, you know, it's, it's fun.
I mean, it's, it's empowering. It, it's, it's great to be able
(27:53):
to because young people are not necessarily jaded.
After 20 years of you, you get some time to be a little
sarcastic, little jaded about, you know, finance and the world.
And to have people who are wide open eyes and happy and just,
you know, looking forward to, to, to develop themselves.
(28:14):
It's, it's great. You know, you, you, you don't
have to shape them into saying there's not too many bad habits.
You have to, you know, I mean, we all pick bad habits in life
and in uni, but I mean, you don't have a lot of work bad
habits to, to, to fight against.So you can help them find their
own way. And I think that really looking
forward to that thing. That'd be really interesting.
(28:34):
Yeah, no, I think that sounds awesome because actually when
people talk about resilience, they automatically tend to focus
on the individual and individual's mindset.
But actually, I think to build a, a resilient workforce, you
need to give them space to be able to, to fail to ask
questions, to voice opinion. And given giving people of a
(28:55):
lower down, let's say ranking within the company's structural
hierarchy. I think that's such a healthy
thing because in in a controlledand and way of course, but today
was so that they can feel heard and free to voice things and not
just harness it and let these seeds of doubt or anxiousness
grow. But they the the caveat there is
(29:16):
you also need to coach the people they will be reporting to
a little bit because, you know, some of us don't take don't
necessarily, you know, there arepeople who go through to think,
well, my boss told me I had, youknow, I couldn't say anything,
Sir, for I'm, you know, kind of like it's been done to you.
You're going to do it to the next person.
(29:37):
And yeah, we're going to break that cycle.
And it's like for us to say, lucky, you got to let them fail.
You got to let them say something stupid in the meeting.
Hopefully it's warm in front of clients, but you know, you got
to let them do it. And yeah, maybe the first time
it's better to take them aside after the meeting.
You know, I, you know, I always one thing that I very, very
(29:58):
strong on is public praising, but private trastising, you
know, the old style of, you know, having to give somebody a
dressing in front of everybody else.
It does nothing. I mean, it's so
counterproductive, it's not evenfunny.
But you know, again, because it's been done to people,
they're like, oh, now I'm the one that can that can do it, you
(30:20):
know, so trying to break that cycle.
I think that's, you know, you got to let them fail.
You got to let them find their own direction.
You got to let them, you got to let them waste a, a normal
amount of our or that's right. You got to let them waste a
reasonable amount sometimes of time to, for them to find the
(30:42):
solution or find out it works. Because if you're, if you're
trying to speed up everything every time you, you've, you
know, spoon feed them, they're never going to learn anything.
So yeah, let them let let them struggle a little bit and then
it's, you know, that's how they learn.
And almost actually, you talked about AI earlier that that
element of building the muscle of critical thinking and not
(31:02):
leaning too hard on AI tools, for example.
It's almost like the a similar type of mind framework to, to
use in that way. But I was going to kind of ask
then in, in kind of reflection almost of the last 3037 years.
It's kind of two, two parts of this.
One is, you know, looking back at all the different hats that
(31:23):
you have worn, you've, you've talked about several, What are
some of the biggest lessons you've learned along the way #1
And then what's one thing? Because I know when I did meet
you for a coffee, you're just super honest about everything.
So just curious, what's one thing that you think you could
have done better? Because I think if people hear
that, they might go, ah, actually, yeah, that's that's
advice that I can act on and maybe I could save myself time.
(31:48):
Could have done better is I havea not having an open mind to
office politics, but being more realistic that it is present in
a large company and instead of blindly fight it and, you know,
be 100% proud of, of, of maybe. I'm not suggesting to do it.
(32:10):
I'm just saying there might be away to handle it better.
I could have handled different situation better as opposed to
being a being told that I'm as subtle as a brick on the side of
the head. I could have learned to deliver
a different message and, and, you know, I could have
understood what made once you understand what makes somebody
(32:34):
take a little bit or a click or,or what filter.
But once you understand that a little better, it's, it's easier
to adapt your answers to them orhow you work with them as
opposed to, you know, assuming that, you know, there's one way
to do something and it's your way or the highway.
I think being more attuned, well, as bring back to what we
(32:54):
said earlier, being attuned to the soft skills earlier in my
career. Sadly, when you're, you know,
when you read a cycle, when you're out of university, you
don't have a big ego because youknow, like you're at the bottom,
you're at the bottom of the totem and, and you need to, you
know, you're still learning. So fine.
But once you start to do really well and get promoted and get
(33:16):
promoted, you reach a point where I think it's, I'm sure
that that spot is wildly different among people.
But you reach a point where you're not mature and old enough
to understand that there are things that maybe you should be
more attuned to. And you know, you're still young
(33:41):
enough to think that you know everything.
So at some point with maturity, maturity is not an age thing,
but it's, it's a, it's an old joke.
It's not the mileage, it's not the age of Kelsey, the mileage
and mileage and, and, and, and company would be like, how many
situation have you had about howit's not just the amount of
hours or the amount of years you've been in the business, but
what a what problem have you dealt with?
(34:02):
What failures have you added? The more you have these, the the
better it is hopefully more successful failures.
But it, it, it really shapes, you know, how you are and at
some point to be a little bit more to say, you know, could
have done things differently. That's why I'm so big on trying
to tell, you know, younger people to, you know, be attuned
(34:23):
to the soft skills. It's funny, I, I, I did take
psychology one O 1, but I think I in university, what I think I
should have taken here psychology 2O one or two O2,
whatever it is, the one after that.
But really try to understand people is, is crucial and
whether its clients are it's crucial, especially crucial in
the marketing role. But marketing is not necessarily
(34:44):
just going and talking to your clients.
Marketing can be internal. You have a new way, you have an
idea you want to push, you know,you want an idea, you want to
have a new fund, like an somebody has an idea for a fund.
Well, they have to sell it internally for us.
So you know, the powers to be togo, Hey, that's a great idea.
Let's do it. You have to be able to convince
(35:04):
people. So, you know, the skills
required to do this, you know, are crucial and, and you know,
should always try to, you know, I, I, I, I told pre university
students, yeah, that were, that we were hosting.
I said, that's before like that one advice.
I said, OK, well, read more, butI don't tell them.
(35:28):
I said, if you're going to read one book, that's one book only,
you shouldn't do. But let's say you do only one
book Meditation by Marcus Uriel is if you, if, if that's the
only book you read, you'll get I, I, I'd like to think you'll
get a lot of it. And a lot of it is going to be
into self improvements, soft skills.
(35:48):
You know, when you talk about it's, it's, it's all in there.
And it's, it blew my mind when Iread that, that that book was
written 2000 years ago. I certain that if I had the time
to go change in that book, to gochange the, what gives away that
the fact it was in the Roman eraand it was 2000 years ago.
(36:10):
If I could change all of these things, you know, take out the
word emperor and things like this and pretend that it was a
mock, people would read and go, Oh yeah, of course it's totally
applicable to this crazy media and 24/7 news cycle that we had.
They would think it's completelyapplicable.
All the advice are wrote and it was written 2000 years ago or
so. So, you know, I would say
(36:34):
develop the, the other technicalskills, the soft skill, the
people skill, the write writing skills.
I'm a, I'm, I'm a numbers personand I'm best writer.
And it's, I'm some colleagues who might listen to this will
start to laugh and say that I, I, I should be worse than saying
I'm not really good, actually pretty horrible.
That's a skill I should have learned, you know, like
(36:55):
basically, you know, because again, it comes down to if you,
if you need to convince something somebody by writing a
memo, you know, I had the old engineering or, or, you know,
math thing. No, I got to, you know, got to
just kind of make the points aregoing to show the numbers, you
know, and then, you know, the rest of that's fluff, you know,
you know, at some point I realized that, well, maybe it
(37:17):
wasn't fluff. Maybe I should have spent a bit
more, you know, time educating myself on, on, you know, better
writings and better, better people's skills earlier, earlier
on, basically so. Well, I was going to ask you
actually if there was one piece of advice to give, but is this
is that so? We've just heard it right.
You've just given the spoiler. Away It's the meditation.
(37:39):
Yeah, No, honestly, I mean, I'm trying to, you know, we all a
lot of people tend to have a short attention span with
YouTube and everything. So you know, I'm not going to
say go read War and Peace or or anything like this, but if you
want one book better than that, keep reading a lot.
(38:01):
You know, you look at you know, Warren Buffett spends.
I don't know what percentage I've read somewhere.
He spends an inordinate amount of of his daytime reading and
it's tough. He doesn't read only annual
report and 10 KSI mean he reads a lot.
Bill Gates reads an awful lot. Ray Delalo like reads like you
all the best investors and readers.
(38:24):
I mean, to be a good investor, you don't understand what, where
the, the world is going. Do you understand that you have
to read a lot? So I would say, you know, don't
read a lot would be a better thing.
But if you have to, you know, ifyou hate it and you know, read
one book, read that one book. I would say, because it's, it's
really life lessons. It's applicable to your personal
life, your family life and your professional life.
So I, I wish again, wish I'd done thing differently.
(38:48):
I wish somebody would have told me when I was younger.
I I might have said that philosophy, you know, but I wish
somebody who could have convinced me to read that way
younger than I did. OK, cool.
Well, look, we'll, we'll wrap itup there and just a quick shout
out because I know that there's a huge, 2 huge societies on the
(39:08):
Warwick University campus in both finance and economics, but
there's many more that are all going to come together because
Mark and I are going to be on campus.
We'll be together with a couple of members of both the Amplify
me and the Yorkshire team, and we'll be running an exclusive
simulation related to the company, So one that we've never
done before on on campus. And it's going to be an
(39:31):
opportunity to speak to Mark anda number of his colleagues.
And I'll be hosting a panel as well.
So look out for the registrationlink.
And in fact, I'll add it to the show notes on this episode.
So if you're Warwick University,please do.
I'd love to meet you and for youto get involved.
But hopefully everyone found that conversation enjoyable.
And Mark, thank you so much for for sharing your your 37 years
(39:51):
with me. Well, there you go.
Thank you, Anthony. Thank you for reminding me.
It's 37. I'm really looking for, you know
what, I am really, really looking forward to that evening
because again, we didn't have that back then.
It was it was Salomon Brothers came to to McGill University
where I was studying and they had a little room.
And if you were lucky enough to be elected to go and talk to
(40:12):
them, that was it. And they and it.
They weren't pitching anything. It was like you had to pitch
yourself to them. So I'm really looking forward to
how we're going to do this. This looks really fantastic, so
thank you for just organizing that.
That's great. I I actually remember I was at
the Lehman Brothers chat in 2005at my university.
(40:33):
So yeah, life could have taken adifferent path, but.
All. Right.
All the best. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome back to the Market Maker Podcast.
And today I'm joined by Mark Bergeron, A founding member of
Orchard Global's predecessor company, which is now a leading
alternative investment manager with over $9 billion in assets
under management. With nearly 40 years in finance,
Mark has wore many hats from trader to entrepreneur to
(00:20):
President and Global Head of Sustainability.
As he begins his transition toward retirement, Mark is
leading the development of a newinternal program at Orchard
focused on talent development and mentorship, an area he is
deeply passionate about. South.
In this conversation, we're going to dive into his journey,
the soft skills that matter the most, and the lessons he wants
(00:41):
next generation of finance professionals to carry forward.
So Mark, how are you? Good.
Good yourself. Thank you, Anthony, for having
me. It's great.
It's a it's a pleasure to have you.
How does it sound when I say 40 years in finance?
How does? How does that feel?
37 I'm turning, turning a big number this year.
(01:04):
I've told everybody, don't call me, please.
Next year, we can celebrate. Now it's amazing and I'm sure
there's going to be so many great insights to come here.
So perhaps then you could tell us a little bit about about that
background. So going all the way back to a
large proportion of our audienceare in there early careers or
possibly even a student thinkingabout their career in finance.
(01:25):
So what did it look like back then for you going from study
and those first steps into finance?
Well, I'll, I'll take even one step further back than this.
Full disclosure is I was a a a afailed electrical engineer.
When I say fail, I didn't mean failing the classes because I
was passing, but I just hated itwith a passion.
(01:46):
And the goal is all had always been to get my engineering
degree, work two years, then go to an MBA and doing finance.
So being math oriented, basically, I just made the when
I realized how much I I hated engineering, I just made the
leap straight into finance. That's where I feel at the time
anyway, I was feeling really good, you know, with regards to
(02:07):
numbers and everything. But the the interesting thing is
I started my career in 88 and those might remember that in 87,
we had a little bit of a hiccup in the market.
I had thought that I wanted to go into investment banking and
our teachers in school in 87th as kids think of something else.
(02:28):
Literally for the next few years, I saw an ad for somebody
to work in fixed income trading,bond trading.
And to be honest, back then university did not prepared us
very well for the bond market. I knew that yield and price were
inversely related. And that was about it, like
literally. And then my first interview, I
(02:49):
guess The Who became my, the person who hired me, look at me
and says, well, I guess you don't know much about the bond
market, do you? He says that it's, you know, X
time. I don't know if it was 10 time
back then the, the 10 or 20 timebigger than the equity market,
because all you heard back then was the equity market.
You know, you turn on CNBC equity, equity, equity and then,
you know, there's a big world out there on the bond market.
(03:10):
So basically I, I became an accidental bond trader and it
suited me. Loved it.
You quickly learned that, you know, to be into trading itself,
all those economics course you took, you know, they have great
value and everything, but that'snot how the market work on a
short term basis. And somebody used to love to
(03:31):
remind that the market can remain at a crazy level longer
than you can remain solvent in your trading book.
So I learned pretty quickly to, you know, let go a little bit on
of all those theories and just, you know, just just follow the
market, which I guess in the long run is not something I
really wanted to do. There's a fair amount of, I'm
not going to lie to people thinkabout that.
There's a fair amount of stress into that, that business.
(03:53):
And it's unlike investment banking or even performing.
It's not like short term stress.And then, you know, I mean,
there are times where the market's not moving much, but
there are times that it's, it's,it's it, it doesn't leave you
like you're, you're, you're not a day trader as a bond trader.
Usually you, you, you know, you go to bed with positions on your
(04:14):
book. Something can happen in the
oversea market overnight and youwake up, you come in the next
morning or you, or worse, you'vehad a lot of phone calls middle
of the night. And, you know, try to back then,
there was no phone with, you know, the BlackBerry was so
basic. There was no, you know, we
couldn't even if we turn on our computer, we couldn't get access
to Bloomberg anything like this.You had to ask her what is U.S.
Treasury doing and everything? So I was a little being in the
(04:36):
dark, but I was, you know, baptism by fire.
You learned a lot on, on on the job.
And that's, you know, that's howwe, that's how you survive,
basically. There was finance was known back
then and maybe still a little bit nowadays, but you know,
training desk were a brutal place to, to, to grow up, as I
(04:59):
call it. Probably there was 0 training on
HR on how to deal with people. It was, you know, stapler across
the head and, you know, go get me a bagel.
And, you know, lots of insult and lots of putting down and
lots of lots of swearing. But you are to, you know, you
had to learn not to get that bother you too much.
Those who learned to do this didwell, those who didn't have to
(05:22):
find job somewhere else in a hurry.
But the way I look at it, you know, since then I look at it as
there was great formation for mebecause if you can survive this,
you know, I remember the gentleman I was asked to, that
was, I was hard to, to replace the gentleman British guy and
make sure that was retiring. So at some .2 months into the
(05:44):
war, I was just out of my wits, stressed out.
And you know, I remember that hetook me out for lunch and I told
him as Mr. Caress said, I, I don't know how you how.
And he was a calm, very calm person.
And I don't know how you can deal with that.
And it was well known that Mister Kerr had been in the
British regiment. And he told me very calmly, the
sun when you have bullets flyingleft, right and center view,
it's not a little ball market action that's going to.
(06:06):
And I looked at him and said, I'm sorry, Sir, but I'm not add
bullets flying next to me. So I'm, I'm learning.
And he goes does don't take it personally.
Your personal software is not tied to your PNL that day.
So, you know, those are two different things in the long
run. Well, if you're not good PNLS,
you have to find another job or you're being asked to find
another job but in a but it's not, you know, it's not you try
(06:27):
not to have that. Take a value of who you are as a
person, basically. So how long did that, that
particular part of the career last for then in the end?
Oh, oh God. ADA 2, ADA 296-9697.
I thought that I was getting so good at that, you know, why
would I trade another firm's capital?
(06:49):
And I'll trade my own firm and my own capital.
And I did bonds and FX, which was I understood.
And then I made the payroll mistake of thinking that all of
those way I can trade. Why not look at commodities, You
know, they move a lot. So you know, and you've learned
(07:11):
very quickly during the, I think97 was the Russian crisis and
soybean crash. And you learned that market is
limit down. And what that means is like the
market opens, hits the limit, nobody can trade, see you
tomorrow opens limit down again.And so the concept of, oh, I had
my stops here and there and you know, doesn't happen.
I mean, commodities are not as liquid as the S&P 500 or as
(07:34):
bonds. And even those markets can have
gaps someday, but you have severe gaps in commodities.
So that was the end of that. And then I, I thought that I
could use all the skills I had in fixed income and cash market
and probably that into a bit of derivative I looked at.
And so I started working at Bankers Trust with was, you
(07:54):
know, a derivative shop mostly where you learn it was it was,
you know, an extremely interesting place to work
because you could be creative. That was passed bankers shot out
of hiccups themselves. But after that, you know, you
could do equity derivative, fixed income derivative, you
(08:14):
name it. And you know, it was really fine
problem solving. You spoke to a corporate client
or you spoke to pension fund andthey say, well, you know, I'd
like to do this or that. And then you say, OK, let's try
to create an instrument that canhelp you achieve your goal given
your market view. So that was super interesting.
So I did that. Then we got bought by Deutsche
(08:35):
Bank and I did that till 2001 and that's when I left that Co
founded New Shore which became Orchard which is where I am
retiring from today. Love that that empire is
actually like a a huge company in many several years.
So yeah, there was let's unpack some of that in particular,
because you know, one of the things that I think is really
(08:57):
interesting is that you start inthese places where you know, you
a big company, you've got accessto intelligence and people
network and clients, things likethat.
So as you progress and get more senior, obviously they they do,
I think those big companies quite a good job at trying to
make you that this is the place to be and you know, this is the
(09:18):
seat to have. So taking that leap then to go
and start your own firm. I just would be interested to
unpack of what, what motivated you.
Is it just that is that process you just explained being able to
really work on core problems with good clients?
If I was dishonest, I could tellyou that it's after reflecting
and seeing a total business opportunity and everything,
(09:40):
blah, blah that, but that's not really what happened.
Reality was that the element of office politics came in
massively, which is something I was not used to, which something
I hated because probably becauseI was really poor at it or I'm
poor at it because I hated it. I don't know, but started to
really, really dislike what I was doing.
(10:01):
So we saw an opportunity, we went, we talked to the rating
agency, and then we had to do the leap.
And the leap was we had everything lined up, but we
could not have the proof of concept yet, but everything was
lined up. But it despite having the rating
(10:21):
and she says saying, yes, go ahead.
If you bring this, that's going to work.
Then having commercial paper dealers saying, yeah, if you
create this, this, this trust orthis vehicle, we'd like to issue
your paper despite you have all of this and suddenly go like,
wow, I'm starting with nothing. But at some point we just, you
know, it's almost like, I don't know, taking a deep breath and
jumping into the in the lake or or the pool and hoping you can
(10:45):
swim. But literally when we first
started, we rented off a space of a friend of mine who tried to
get a hedge fund going did not work.
We're hoping that I wasn't a curse, but so we rented
something when we paid them off over time of all the furniture
and there was just two of us. And then we hired a young lady
who was receptionist, secretary,accountant, IT person, you name
(11:09):
it. So it, it, you know, it was very
different. But I, I can't really recall
having difficulty adapting when I was at banker stress.
I was told that I found out later on because I used to make,
you know, they told me, OK, we have to go pitch to such a
corporate or, or pension fund. I'd make my own presentation.
(11:30):
So just the way I was used to working.
I did not find it to be a big, abig challenge, but I do, I do
remember fondly colleague friends of us who came and join
us and you know, for the three of us then.
And, and then my new colleague asked me who was our Courier
company. And I said, well, what do you
mean? He says, well, you know, if we
(11:51):
need to send a letter, but, or package, I said, where, where
does it have to go when it was literally 2 blocks away?
And I said, OK, why don't you walk there?
Because, you know, Deutsche Bank, you give it to your PA and
the PA gives it to the company'sdedicated, you know, you don't
have this as a small company. But that was not a, that was not
a, that was not hard for me to because I, I don't know, that
(12:13):
felt more natural for me than a big company.
And I guess, you know, there aredifferent personalities that are
suitable for each one of them. And that's something that, you
know, I'm being asked a lot about that from young people in
university. You know, should I go to Goldman
Sachs or should I go to And you know, there's no right or wrong
(12:33):
answer, but there's there's definitely the wrong personality
for the wrong side of that equation.
Looking back in retrospect then that entrepreneurialism, so
seeing the uncertainty almost asopportunity rather than the
safety of the clarity that a bigfirm gives you.
Can you connect the dots to anything within your life
(12:54):
experience when you were youngerthat would have given you that
that that appetite on that risk perspective, do you think?
I'm getting fullest over here. When when my colleague and I
started our our we had put out the the threshold was fairly
low. We were so fed up.
We said like if we can replace our base salary and earn enough
(13:17):
money to pay ourselves a little bonus, we're good.
Like that was literally the goalfor the first year or two is
like replace what you add and then very quickly ran out.
OK, well, that's kind of silly to have taken all that risk to
only and then you can see all that, that, you know, you're
free to see different opportunity and to grow the
business. But in terms of of what I mean,
(13:38):
my my dad worked, my dad was an accountant.
He had his own firm. His office was in our house
basement and has separate entry and everything back in Montreal.
And I guess I saw him as I neverthought of my dad as an
entrepreneur. I just thought that he were for
himself. But I guess that must have run
something in the back of my headthat, you know, she don't want
(14:00):
to deal with all the office politics, everything.
Then, you know, I mean, the you exchange a set of problems for
another, but still you don't youknow, that's something you don't
have to deal with. And in the end of you know what
you know what makes you happy inlife and what makes you happy at
work. And as, as, as easy to say,
you'll think about if, if you know, if you really love what
(14:21):
you do, it doesn't feel like work it it truly doesn't.
And if what you like is a big firm, that's great.
And you'll, you know, you won't mind putting in the big hours
because it won't feel that bad. Same thing, all the issues with
being a smaller company. You, you won't, they won't
bother you too much because you like what you're doing.
And if you can even love it, that's even better.
Cool. Well, let's let's move forward
(14:43):
to, to talk about, you know, when we met up, you were very
passionate about this new kind of role you're taking on as a
consultant with Orchard, which is about talent development and
mentorship. And so couple of questions here
about soft skills in particular and advice just generally for
for young people. So my first one here is about
you. You spoke to me about the
importance of adaptability and resilience.
(15:04):
So what are those skills look like when someone's starting out
and in practice for you? OK.
Let's start with resilience first, and that's maybe a bit
more touchy. I think it's something that
young people need to develop andit's probably something that the
younger generation, to be honest, doesn't have as much as
(15:25):
us. But in fairness, our parents
probably thought that we didn't have the same Brazilians that
they did. And their parents thought that,
you know, So when you put it together, we went from, in some
instances from having a generation that had to grow
their own food in this batch of their own food to the social
media generation in three, threeor four, I mean, in really,
really short time. So, so things are very are very
different, but resilience is being told on the entrepreneur
(15:49):
side is to being told no, you know, you got this great idea,
it's not working or, or you know, even though you, you bind
your heart, you think that this would be the greatest thing for
this client to do, but they justdon't see it the same way as you
do it. So you have a no resilience is
having your superior tell you that either diplomatically or
not diplomatically that your work is not good and has to be
(16:10):
redone. Resilience is trying to convey a
message and you're running a lotof trouble, you know, exactly
putting either in writing or in a presentation.
What, what, what you know. And you, you have to keep at it.
You have to keep at it. You're going to present that to
one group and you see the rise rolls and nobody understand what
you're trying to say. Then you got go back and go, OK,
(16:32):
don't take it personally. Got to redo it.
So resilience is, is, is moving forward despite being said no,
despite being saying it's not good enough, despite somebody
maybe tell you, yeah, we don't really care about doing it that
way. It's, you know, develop a
slightly thicker skin a little bit in that you have to
(16:54):
depersonalize that you, you know, a lot of people see 100%
of their work as equate up to 100% of their own personal
value. I mean, there's a huge overlap.
I'm not a psychologist and I know it's huge, but it's not
100. It's not because you did do
something, you know, wrong or wasn't great that you can't do
it better. But The thing is, if, if, if, if
(17:16):
you let that get to you, it's going to take you a while to,
you know, give your head a shakeand go, all right, let's redo
it. Let's say, how do I do it
better? How who can help me do it
better? So resilience is, is to to move
forward. You know, I have to move forward
and not sit there and, you know,lick your wounds for too long.
(17:37):
Adaptability is, is, is, is, is,is once you need to get out of a
bad situation or, or or you know, you can be as resilient as
well, but at some point you knowyou can't do the same thing and
expect different results, right?So adaptability might be the
market moved. You know, you can have the best
ideas if you're a trader or if you're a structure or if you're,
(17:58):
you know, or you want to create a new fund if you take too long,
maybe that was a brilliant idea six months ago.
It's not The market is moving. The economy is moving,
especially not with a is. I don't even want to think how
quickly things are moving right now.
If you can't adapt or you know you're, you're dead in the
(18:20):
water. Aptability could be also in your
own career evolved change or even move up promotion or
lateral or change position or change.
A company we work for and our new, new superior is wildly
different than the previous one.And you can't interact the same
way. And if you try to keep just
doing the same thing, you find out that maybe they don't
appreciate the way you work. You need to adapt to different
(18:42):
people. And sometime it could be you
work for two departments, you know, you, you, you, you need to
do and then they're wildly different.
So you, you, you know, adaptability clients, you go and
you, you pitch a certain way to certain people if you're into
the marketing side, but you got to understand that different
clients react different way. But even sometime you, you might
be brought on as the analyst in a meeting with 10 people from a
(19:06):
big bank or something. And then to to help present and
you need to read room. You have to to be quick and,
and, and OK, what you know, the way in your head you had
rehearsed something and all of asudden you might realize this is
going to fall flat if I delivered my message the same
way. So pivot, change, change
something quickly. So basically adaptability has to
(19:28):
be big because, you know, I think the days of you did
something one way and five yearslater you're still doing it the
same way. I really can't see that
happening. And and it's it's, it's not
something just for young people.Like I recently I signed up and
I and I and I did a six week course on AI because for people
(19:50):
a bit older, we had a joke aboutthe VHS flashing 12, which was
what your parents had AVHS and couldn't program it as they and
it kept flashing 12:00, which meant it wasn't programmed and
they couldn't do you know, it was kind of a running joke of
people, my generation laughing at our parents saying, oh, look,
their VHS still flash 12. I'm way I feel like I had become
my parent. You know, I'd heard about it.
(20:13):
I was like, what do you do without?
I know what chat you be, but what do you really do with that?
And basically I was like, well, you know, I know I am going to
retirement, but you know, it sounds like I'm going to stop
working tomorrow morning and adaptability.
All right, sign up and and then,you know, understand that better
because otherwise the world is going to pass you by.
I, I was really scared of not understanding and the market
(20:35):
and, and work and the way we work, the way we interact with
one or being influenced by usingAI, moving in a way that I would
understand what was going on. So you know, you have to, you
have to adapt. And those are, you're right,
those are soft skills. You can be the best sure credit
analyst so you can do the best reports and, and find numbers.
(20:56):
Nobody can and dig information. Nobody can.
But you have to deliver the information and you have to deal
with people around you and you need help.
And the soft skills come in whenyou need, when you're asking for
help in your company. You know, every company has
people that have a way of askingthat everybody else will bend
over backward to help them. And there's other people that
they're, let's say, less willingto do.
(21:18):
So you want to be the one that people bend over backward to
help. So, you know, those are, you
know, those are the soft skill that are really important.
And I mean, we can call them life skill.
I guess it's not necessarily being taught in university or
anywhere for that matter, unlessyou kind of decide to develop
or, or you have a mentor, which I, I looking back, I did have a
(21:42):
bit of a mentor, but it was morethis is the market you should be
going. This is like, it was kind of
more guiding my career, but in terms of how to interact with,
you know, never did that. And then two years ago I worked
with an executive coach and you know, again, you're never too
old to learn. And it's, you know, you have to
adapt, you have to learn, you have to develop soft skills.
(22:07):
Sometime you might think you have the soft skills and then
somebody else that isn't the best of coaching goes like
starts laughing or you think so really, right.
So maybe you might consider doing this this way or that way.
So I mean, I think these are very, very, very important.
And people out of university arereally focused on the technical
(22:30):
aspect of what they do, which which obviously they they need
to and they should, but they should do.
It doesn't take a lot of time topause and wonder if they're
asking for assistance, if they're not receiving it, they
what are they doing right? Or if I don't know their
colleagues not treating them well, what are they doing right
or wrong or, you know, same thing.
So I think those are very, very important.
It's not being taught much. And I think that's why the
(22:55):
program we're developing, the mentoring aspect of it.
I'm looking forward to that because, because the way I'm
thinking about it go, I wish I had somebody telling me this,
you know, when I was younger andI was like, well, you know, why
don't I be the person now telling them or, or suggesting
or guiding them, or I mean, obviously don't want to give too
many answers right away. You want them to find the answer
to themselves. But you know, guiding them a
(23:16):
little bit, I think would be great because I think we, we got
on to this Anthony, when, when, where the coffee was my view.
And I'm like get a lot of Flack for that.
But my view that trading best trading firms, investment bank,
fund managers, generally speaking, I'll tone it down, but
(23:37):
I'll say you're not necessarily good managers of talent because
mostly people get promoted basedon PNL.
How much money they brought in. If you're into marketing, how
much money, how many clients yousign up or however your firm
works. If you're a trader, how much
money have you made? It's all driven by PNL usually.
(23:57):
And people who are good at generating PNL can be good
manager of people, but not necessarily.
And I think what happened a lot of times is you'll find that a
personalities that get somebody to be a bit more mercurial, to
be more warrior like and take noprison at all.
All that, you know, attitude that some people have, they're
(24:18):
great to get. They don't play well in the
sand. The sandbox with other
necessarily results in great PNL.
But you put somebody with that mindset in charge of a group of
individual and it's chaos. And I've seen it firms, I work,
I've seen it that friends firm. I still see it, you know,
grabbing a coffee or lunch with somebody as a nine, you know,
(24:39):
they're they're they're downloading how mad they are at
their work and what's happening there.
And you see that, you know, all over.
So, you know, we're not a we don't tend to be a business
where I don't mean just fund managers, I mean literally
banks, investment banks. And then like, we don't tend to
develop people until they're very, very high level.
(25:01):
So when people are, you know, approaching, you know, C-Suite
or, or directorship or somethingvery senior, then the company
starts to think, oh, well, maybeexecutive coke Stam and, you
know, and all this. But otherwise, whereas other for
my wife used to work in a pharmaindustry and they spend weeks at
(25:23):
seminars where they, you know, they're trying to coach people
on on on management skills, basically, or people management
skill and end up like in terms of in marketing or sales, they
won't necessarily put maybe to sell the best salesperson needs
to be left as a salesperson and putting them in charge of other
people is gonna get the revenue down because and they may not be
(25:44):
able, they may not be good enough in manager of people to
bring everybody else up as much of what they're down because
they're not selling 24/7. So, you know, maybe you put
somebody who's not the best salesperson, but is more
organized, better communicator and, you know, who cares?
(26:06):
That person is not the most profitable salesperson.
The, the firm is going to profitprobably more by putting
somebody like this, putting really the best person who is
the manager of people and not necessarily the, you know, the
best marketer is not necessarilythe best mark, the the best head
of marketing. So I think that that's something
I'm really excited is, is, is to, you know, for a number of
(26:29):
funds, I sat back and, and, and been unhappy about the way
things are, things were. Now I can, you know, influence
it and, and try to, you know, I'd like to think with all our
recruits that I, I will be an unbiased person for them.
I've done all I've done a lot ofthe, as you mentioned, I've done
a lot of of, of the work at Orchard.
(26:49):
I've, I've worked in pretty muchevery department except invest
and instead investment and credit analysis, but I've done
pretty much everything else. So I understand how the
department work, You know, I don't have preference into any
department. And I think for, you know,
somebody to be able to, to ask, you know, say, hey, you know,
I'm having a little bit a littlebit of trouble knowing that it's
(27:09):
not it's not going to go to their superior and and you don't
bite them back. I think it's it's useful.
And I think, you know that that's I will have I have that
trust with people. I've worked for a long time.
I'm going to need to try to get it very quickly with those young
people. And I think just sitting down
and listening. And I already I've done that
(27:31):
twice this summer with our summer intern.
Sit down, just grab them for lunch.
Hey, let's go and have lunch. How's it going?
And, you know, not with the headof their desk.
And I think they, you know, they, hopefully they, they
thought that they knew that I was not there just to spy back
to, but try to really see how they were doing and give them
advice and everything. And, you know, it's, it's fun.
I mean, it's, it's empowering. It, it's, it's great to be able
(27:53):
to because young people are not necessarily jaded.
After 20 years of you, you get some time to be a little
sarcastic, little jaded about, you know, finance and the world.
And to have people who are wide open eyes and happy and just,
you know, looking forward to, to, to develop themselves.
(28:14):
It's, it's great. You know, you, you, you don't
have to shape them into saying there's not too many bad habits.
You have to, you know, I mean, we all pick bad habits in life
and in uni, but I mean, you don't have a lot of work bad
habits to, to, to fight against.So you can help them find their
own way. And I think that really looking
forward to that thing. That'd be really interesting.
(28:34):
Yeah, no, I think that sounds awesome because actually when
people talk about resilience, they automatically tend to focus
on the individual and individual's mindset.
But actually, I think to build a, a resilient workforce, you
need to give them space to be able to, to fail to ask
questions, to voice opinion. And given giving people of a
(28:55):
lower down, let's say ranking within the company's structural
hierarchy. I think that's such a healthy
thing because in in a controlledand and way of course, but today
was so that they can feel heard and free to voice things and not
just harness it and let these seeds of doubt or anxiousness
grow. But they the the caveat there is
(29:16):
you also need to coach the people they will be reporting to
a little bit because, you know, some of us don't take don't
necessarily, you know, there arepeople who go through to think,
well, my boss told me I had, youknow, I couldn't say anything,
Sir, for I'm, you know, kind of like it's been done to you.
You're going to do it to the next person.
(29:37):
And yeah, we're going to break that cycle.
And it's like for us to say, lucky, you got to let them fail.
You got to let them say something stupid in the meeting.
Hopefully it's warm in front of clients, but you know, you got
to let them do it. And yeah, maybe the first time
it's better to take them aside after the meeting.
You know, I, you know, I always one thing that I very, very
(29:58):
strong on is public praising, but private trastising, you
know, the old style of, you know, having to give somebody a
dressing in front of everybody else.
It does nothing. I mean, it's so
counterproductive, it's not evenfunny.
But you know, again, because it's been done to people,
they're like, oh, now I'm the one that can that can do it, you
(30:20):
know, so trying to break that cycle.
I think that's, you know, you got to let them fail.
You got to let them find their own direction.
You got to let them, you got to let them waste a, a normal
amount of our or that's right. You got to let them waste a
reasonable amount sometimes of time to, for them to find the
(30:42):
solution or find out it works. Because if you're, if you're
trying to speed up everything every time you, you've, you
know, spoon feed them, they're never going to learn anything.
So yeah, let them let let them struggle a little bit and then
it's, you know, that's how they learn.
And almost actually, you talked about AI earlier that that
element of building the muscle of critical thinking and not
(31:02):
leaning too hard on AI tools, for example.
It's almost like the a similar type of mind framework to, to
use in that way. But I was going to kind of ask
then in, in kind of reflection almost of the last 3037 years.
It's kind of two, two parts of this.
One is, you know, looking back at all the different hats that
(31:23):
you have worn, you've, you've talked about several, What are
some of the biggest lessons you've learned along the way #1
And then what's one thing? Because I know when I did meet
you for a coffee, you're just super honest about everything.
So just curious, what's one thing that you think you could
have done better? Because I think if people hear
that, they might go, ah, actually, yeah, that's that's
advice that I can act on and maybe I could save myself time.
(31:48):
Could have done better is I havea not having an open mind to
office politics, but being more realistic that it is present in
a large company and instead of blindly fight it and, you know,
be 100% proud of, of, of maybe. I'm not suggesting to do it.
(32:10):
I'm just saying there might be away to handle it better.
I could have handled different situation better as opposed to
being a being told that I'm as subtle as a brick on the side of
the head. I could have learned to deliver
a different message and, and, you know, I could have
understood what made once you understand what makes somebody
(32:34):
take a little bit or a click or,or what filter.
But once you understand that a little better, it's, it's easier
to adapt your answers to them orhow you work with them as
opposed to, you know, assuming that, you know, there's one way
to do something and it's your way or the highway.
I think being more attuned, well, as bring back to what we
(32:54):
said earlier, being attuned to the soft skills earlier in my
career. Sadly, when you're, you know,
when you read a cycle, when you're out of university, you
don't have a big ego because youknow, like you're at the bottom,
you're at the bottom of the totem and, and you need to, you
know, you're still learning. So fine.
But once you start to do really well and get promoted and get
(33:16):
promoted, you reach a point where I think it's, I'm sure
that that spot is wildly different among people.
But you reach a point where you're not mature and old enough
to understand that there are things that maybe you should be
more attuned to. And you know, you're still young
(33:41):
enough to think that you know everything.
So at some point with maturity, maturity is not an age thing,
but it's, it's a, it's an old joke.
It's not the mileage, it's not the age of Kelsey, the mileage
and mileage and, and, and, and company would be like, how many
situation have you had about howit's not just the amount of
hours or the amount of years you've been in the business, but
what a what problem have you dealt with?
(34:02):
What failures have you added? The more you have these, the the
better it is hopefully more successful failures.
But it, it, it really shapes, you know, how you are and at
some point to be a little bit more to say, you know, could
have done things differently. That's why I'm so big on trying
to tell, you know, younger people to, you know, be attuned
(34:23):
to the soft skills. It's funny, I, I, I did take
psychology one O 1, but I think I in university, what I think I
should have taken here psychology 2O one or two O2,
whatever it is, the one after that.
But really try to understand people is, is crucial and
whether its clients are it's crucial, especially crucial in
the marketing role. But marketing is not necessarily
(34:44):
just going and talking to your clients.
Marketing can be internal. You have a new way, you have an
idea you want to push, you know,you want an idea, you want to
have a new fund, like an somebody has an idea for a fund.
Well, they have to sell it internally for us.
So you know, the powers to be togo, Hey, that's a great idea.
Let's do it. You have to be able to convince
(35:04):
people. So, you know, the skills
required to do this, you know, are crucial and, and you know,
should always try to, you know, I, I, I, I told pre university
students, yeah, that were, that we were hosting.
I said, that's before like that one advice.
I said, OK, well, read more, butI don't tell them.
(35:28):
I said, if you're going to read one book, that's one book only,
you shouldn't do. But let's say you do only one
book Meditation by Marcus Uriel is if you, if, if that's the
only book you read, you'll get I, I, I'd like to think you'll
get a lot of it. And a lot of it is going to be
into self improvements, soft skills.
(35:48):
You know, when you talk about it's, it's, it's all in there.
And it's, it blew my mind when Iread that, that that book was
written 2000 years ago. I certain that if I had the time
to go change in that book, to gochange the, what gives away that
the fact it was in the Roman eraand it was 2000 years ago.
(36:10):
If I could change all of these things, you know, take out the
word emperor and things like this and pretend that it was a
mock, people would read and go, Oh yeah, of course it's totally
applicable to this crazy media and 24/7 news cycle that we had.
They would think it's completelyapplicable.
All the advice are wrote and it was written 2000 years ago or
so. So, you know, I would say
(36:34):
develop the, the other technicalskills, the soft skill, the
people skill, the write writing skills.
I'm a, I'm, I'm a numbers personand I'm best writer.
And it's, I'm some colleagues who might listen to this will
start to laugh and say that I, I, I should be worse than saying
I'm not really good, actually pretty horrible.
That's a skill I should have learned, you know, like
(36:55):
basically, you know, because again, it comes down to if you,
if you need to convince something somebody by writing a
memo, you know, I had the old engineering or, or, you know,
math thing. No, I got to, you know, got to
just kind of make the points aregoing to show the numbers, you
know, and then, you know, the rest of that's fluff, you know,
you know, at some point I realized that, well, maybe it
(37:17):
wasn't fluff. Maybe I should have spent a bit
more, you know, time educating myself on, on, you know, better
writings and better, better people's skills earlier, earlier
on, basically so. Well, I was going to ask you
actually if there was one piece of advice to give, but is this
is that so? We've just heard it right.
You've just given the spoiler. Away It's the meditation.
(37:39):
Yeah, No, honestly, I mean, I'm trying to, you know, we all a
lot of people tend to have a short attention span with
YouTube and everything. So you know, I'm not going to
say go read War and Peace or or anything like this, but if you
want one book better than that, keep reading a lot.
(38:01):
You know, you look at you know, Warren Buffett spends.
I don't know what percentage I've read somewhere.
He spends an inordinate amount of of his daytime reading and
it's tough. He doesn't read only annual
report and 10 KSI mean he reads a lot.
Bill Gates reads an awful lot. Ray Delalo like reads like you
all the best investors and readers.
(38:24):
I mean, to be a good investor, you don't understand what, where
the, the world is going. Do you understand that you have
to read a lot? So I would say, you know, don't
read a lot would be a better thing.
But if you have to, you know, ifyou hate it and you know, read
one book, read that one book. I would say, because it's, it's
really life lessons. It's applicable to your personal
life, your family life and your professional life.
So I, I wish again, wish I'd done thing differently.
(38:48):
I wish somebody would have told me when I was younger.
I I might have said that philosophy, you know, but I wish
somebody who could have convinced me to read that way
younger than I did. OK, cool.
Well, look, we'll, we'll wrap itup there and just a quick shout
out because I know that there's a huge, 2 huge societies on the
(39:08):
Warwick University campus in both finance and economics, but
there's many more that are all going to come together because
Mark and I are going to be on campus.
We'll be together with a couple of members of both the Amplify
me and the Yorkshire team, and we'll be running an exclusive
simulation related to the company, So one that we've never
done before on on campus. And it's going to be an
(39:31):
opportunity to speak to Mark anda number of his colleagues.
And I'll be hosting a panel as well.
So look out for the registrationlink.
And in fact, I'll add it to the show notes on this episode.
So if you're Warwick University,please do.
I'd love to meet you and for youto get involved.
But hopefully everyone found that conversation enjoyable.
And Mark, thank you so much for for sharing your your 37 years
(39:51):
with me. Well, there you go.
Thank you, Anthony. Thank you for reminding me.
It's 37. I'm really looking for, you know
what, I am really, really looking forward to that evening
because again, we didn't have that back then.
It was it was Salomon Brothers came to to McGill University
where I was studying and they had a little room.
And if you were lucky enough to be elected to go and talk to
(40:12):
them, that was it. And they and it.
They weren't pitching anything. It was like you had to pitch
yourself to them. So I'm really looking forward to
how we're going to do this. This looks really fantastic, so
thank you for just organizing that.
That's great. I I actually remember I was at
the Lehman Brothers chat in 2005at my university.
(40:33):
So yeah, life could have taken adifferent path, but.
All. Right.
All the best. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
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My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com