The Value Perspective

This week we welcome Steve Gorelik back to the podcast. Steve is Head of Research and a Portfolio Manager at Firebird Value Fund, a fund that specialises in investing in Russia and Eastern Europe. Back in September of 2022 Steve was our guest on an Eastern European special episode. As we reach the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Steve has returned to the Value Perspective podcast as part of a two part series that continues with next week’s episode featuring well known historian Simon Sebag-Montifiore. Steve has returned to talk about Firebird’s decision to start investing in Russia in the very early 90s, just a few years after the fall of the USSR, which included buying companies for cents in the dollar; why Firebird transitioned from the Benjamin Graham school of Value to Warren Buffet’s; lessons learned looking back from the invasion of Russia into Ukraine; the impact previous crises in the region had on decision making processes and probabilities when faced by the invasion; the fact that there is nothing new under the sun and this is not the first time or last time that a market gets closed; and finally, how to transfer applications of investing in emerging markets to developed markets. Enjoy! NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.

This week we have another entry in our Value Perspective ESG miniseries. We sat down with Bob Brackett, a Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Alliance Bernstein, based in New York and covering the North American oil and gas sector. He started his career working for Exxon Mobile and before joining equity research he worked for McKinsey. In 2018, he also wrote a short novella of sorts entitled How Tech Will End The Oil Age: A Tale of Whales, Wheels, Sails, Fails, Faeces, Fortunes, Madness, Crashes, Travails, Retreats, Charge and Charging, a fascinating tale that explores the history and destruction of commodity and extractive industries. We cover off: what has changed since he published his book in 2018; historical analogies between the fur trade, tobacco and the oil and gas industries; the past, present and future of coal; and lesser known materials that are key to human survival. Enjoy! NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.

This episode is part of out turnaround mini-series. This week, we’re pleased to have Andrew Schemmel as our guest on the Value Perspective podcast. Andrew is the co-founder and director of Eisvogel Group, the private equity firm that specialises in companies providing software, business services, industrial applications and technical products throughout Europe. Notably, Eisvogel is not a company that seeks to invest in turnaround situations, but in the case of one of their investments, due to a multitude of factors, they found themselves working with a company that had to apply for bankruptcy protection. In this episode we discuss: accounting for uncertainty during modelling through scenario analysis; two variables that are difficult for the investor to appreciate from the outside, time and margin for error; communication with all stakeholders, including employees; and finally, human capital as the most important variable in any turnaround. On a final note, this episode was recorded in the summer of 2022, which you might note from some of the weather chat, but we delayed the release in deference to some negotiations with the case study stakeholders. Enjoy! NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.

Happy New Year and welcome back to the Value Perspective podcast. We’re kicking off 2023 with historian Edward Chancellor. You may know him as the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation, written in 1999, two years before the dotcom bubble burst, or as the author of Crunch Time for Credit? written in 2005, right before the global financial crisis. You might be sensing a pattern here. We sat down with Edward to discuss his newest book, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest. This episode covers: Edward’s background in investment banking and his transition into writing, after some time in capital markets’ research; biases that impact central bankers; why even historically minded people miss teachings from the past; excess capacity and its impact on investment styles; and finally the topic du jour, Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX case study from a human behaviour point of view. Enjoy! NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.

This week we have a quick Christmas treat for you. It’s an episode with our returning guest Simon-Evan-Cook. Simon recently wrote a blog post called Solving Christmas: How to Make it Better Next Year which caught our eye. Simon sat down with us to discuss his piece which explains how Christmas is a complex adaptive system and to tell us about his mythical Merry Christmas tree. In this festive season we would also like to remind you of the quiz we are running on the blog with a prize for the winner. We will be taking a short break to celebrate the end of the year and will be back with some new episodes in January. Enjoy! NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.

This week we have friend of the Value Perspective podcast Joe Wiggins back for his third appearance. He has been both a guest and a co-host but this time we’re going to highlight him as an author. Joe has just published his newest book The Intelligent Fund Investor: Practical steps for better results in active and passive funds. We sat down with Joe to cover: the case for active fund management; what sort of things fund investors should be looking out for; why time is the greatest investor advantage; why a broad investment universe without restrictions is so important; and what away from fund performance should fund investors be thinking about when picking a fund. Also, as a nod to the festive season the Value Perspective Christmas quiz will soon be back on the blog. If you answer the most questions correctly, you could find yourself the lucky winner of Joe’s book. Check out the blog for more info. Enjoy! NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.

Believe it or not, it’s our third birthday here on the Value Perspective podcast. To celebrate, we are delighted to welcome back Annie Duke, our first guest when we kicked off this whole project three years ago. Coincidentally, this is also her third appearance on the podcast. We caught up with Annie to discuss her newest book Quit – The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. Our wide ranging conversation covers: why it’s so difficult to walk away; why quitting is a powerful tool for any decision maker; the difficulties of thinking in expected values over time; what age children can be taught the importance of quitting; and to contextualise all of this, what sorts of tool, if any, could help Putin in quitting from what looks like a very bad decision. Enjoy!   NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.  

This week we have Ian Leslie on the show. Ian started his career in advertising but now writes and presents about human behaviour including psychology, culture, tech and business for publications like The New Statesman, The Economist, The Guardian and The FT. Most recently he wrote a book called Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together. He is also the author of the Substack The Ruffian where he covers everything from politics to decision making. We were delighted to chat with him about some of the topics covered in his book including: why being passive aggressive is the worst behaviour with no outcome; the power of humour in dealing with conflict; low versus high contact societies; devil’s advocates and their weaknesses; and the answer to the question on all of our minds, what is the most important rule in dealing with conflict. Enjoy! NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.

This week we have Stacy Havener on the show. Stacy is the founder and CEO of Havener Capital Partners, which is one of the leading independent sales and marketing agencies in financial services specialising in helping boutiques to raise capital. In fact, they have raised over 8 billion dollars for new, undiscovered or start-up funds that has led to over 30 billion dollars in follow on AUM. Please check out Stacy’s LinkedIn page where there’s great advice for sales and marketing in the industry. To chat with Stacy, we were delighted to be joined by former guest and friend of the pod Charlotte Thorne of Capital Generation Partners who co-hosts this episode with Andrew Williams. Charlotte, Andrew and Stacy discuss the power of narrative storytelling and the importance of communicating well in a numbers driven industry.  They also talk about common misconceptions around narrative, what successful stories have in common and the ethics of storytelling. Finally, they showcase how storytelling can help individuals stand out, even in a big firm. Enjoy! NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.

The Value Perspective with Dan Mikulskis Our guest this week is Dan Mikulskis. Dan is an investment partner at Lane Clark & Peacock or LCP. He is also the co-host of a very good podcast called Investment Uncut. He couples this work with a fortnightly newsletter with commentary on what has been happening in markets around the world, which you can subscribe to via LinkedIn. Dan is also particularly well versed with the LDI or liability driven investment crisis and why it caught the pension funds off-guard. It can be a technical topic, so if you would like to understand more of what’s happened, check out his Twitter account @danmikulskis. In this episode we cover topics including: what can be learnt from co-hosting a podcast which can then be applied to the decision making process; accounting for one’s own biases when meeting fund managers; how Dan goes about helping clients deal with uncertainty; the building of models, what makes a good model and when, if at all, one should overrule a model with qualitative insights; and finally how do you learn the right lessons from your process and not learn the wrong lessons.  Enjoy! NEW EPISODES: We release main series episodes every two weeks on Mondays. You can subscribe via Podbean or use this feed URL (https://tvpschroders.podbean.com/feed.xml) in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast players. GET IN TOUCH: send us a tweet: @TheValueTeam  Important information. This podcast is for investment professionals only. This information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or to adopt any investment strategy. Any data has been sourced by us and is provided without any warranties of any kind. It should be independently verified before further publication or use. Third party data is owned or licenced by the data provider and may not be reproduced, extracted or used for any other purpose without the data provider’s consent. Neither we, nor the data provider, will have any liability in connection with the third party data. Reliance should not be placed on any views or information in the material when taking individual investment and/or strategic decisions. Any references to securities, sectors, regions and/or countries are for illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions contained herein are those of individual to whom they are attributed, and may not necessarily represent views expressed or reflected in other communications, strategies or funds. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Exchange rate changes may cause the value of any overseas investments to rise or fall. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The forecasts included should not be relied upon, are not guaranteed and are provided only as at the date of issue. Our forecasts are based on our own assumptions which may change.