There are a lot of women and minorities in the institutional asset management business. Many more than in other wall street businesses.
I think it’s because highly educated buy-side managers tend to be more open minded than your typical white Midwestern male and don’t really care who’s delivering the ideas to us as long as the ideas are good. That and the fact that buy-side managers themselves are a diverse crowd–lots of Jews, Asians, and Indians. Not a whole lot of blacks or hispanics though, guess that’s why you don’t see that many black or hispanic sales people on the institutional level either.
anything to support your claim that midwestern males are more close minded than your “highly educated buyside managers”, are you implying that midwesterners are not highly educated? Or that there are no managers in the midwest?
Midwest? TV, NYCers look at a globe and only see NYC, LA, Tokyo. Indianapolis? Chicago? Twin Cities? Detroit? All meaningless to high minded New Yorkers.
farley013 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think it’s because highly educated buy-side > managers tend to be more open minded than your > typical white Midwestern male and don’t really > care who’s delivering the ideas to us as long as > the ideas are good. That and the fact that > buy-side managers themselves are a diverse > crowd–lots of Jews, Asians, and Indians. Not a > whole lot of blacks or hispanics though, guess > that’s why you don’t see that many black or > hispanic sales people on the institutional level > either. It has nothing to do with “highly educated buy side managers”. It has everything to do with the racial and sexual composition of clients, especially on the public side. Boards of trustees and public client staff are very often >50% female, middle class or minority. The consultant, endowment and foundation communities are pretty diverse also.
Actually most hedge fund managers are still white males and we are much more accepting of minority/women sales people than less educated individual investors, so the “nothing to do with” assertion is completely and erroneously off-base and misguided.
i am talking about the asset management industry. i am not referring to anyone who has any dealings with investment managers, except as their employer. the sales (and consultant relations) people i speak of are raising assets from institutional clients, not selling individual securities (or other services) to hedge fund managers or any other portfolio managers. in other words the sales people do not have to have the approval of hedge fund managers or any other portfolio managers. in big firms they report to the head of distribution who in turn reports to the CEO. investment management department is separate. maybe hedgies can influence who gets hired in IBs to sell to hedge funds, but that is not what I am talking about here. insofar as who gets hired in the investment management industry, if you are at anything larger than a very small firm, portfolio managers have absolutely no say in who gets hired to raise assets. what matters is if those individulals can relate on a personal level to the folks who have mandates to give to investment managers.
Very wrong. >insofar as who gets hired in the investment management industry, if you are at anything >larger than a very small firm, portfolio managers have absolutely no say in who gets >hired to raise assets.
well I have worked at two large asset managers in client service and institutional sales. you clearly don’t know what you are talking about.
As a fund of funds manager I have met with 800+ portfolio managers managing up to $35 billion in assets and almost every single PM I have met with has complete and utter authority over who they hire to market their funds. Let me think, 800 managers and 10 years of Wall Street experience versus 2 managers and two years out of college…which one of us is more likely to know anything more than updating spreadsheets, binding pitchbooks, and going on coffee runs I wonder.
I do know that many municipalities,etc have explicit mandates (quotas) to hire/ reward contracts to minority/ woman owned firms. I have seen this effect choice in brokerage for some big funds, and I know it is a consideration in other areas- although it may not be huge.
hedge funds are a very small part of the asset management universe. i am talking about firms with >100 billion in assets under management. obviously hedge fund managers control every aspect of their business.
If a minority fails in a PWM environement, will he inevitably fail in Institutional sales? Is this a completely different animal ?..since a large % of clients are minorities/women. It seems relevant to discuss because how someone subconsciously perceive a salesperson directly effects the outcome of the salesperson’s efforts. A black man and a white man will yield different results pitching to the exact same clients spitting out the exact same lines.
I guess I should have made myself clearer. Any manager not in the top 50 in AUM (or approx >100b) I consider a small firm. Small firms operate differently, as farley has pointed out.
RycherX Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > If a minority fails in a PWM environement, will he > inevitably fail in Institutional sales? > Is this a completely different animal ?..since a > large % of clients are minorities/women. > > It seems relevant to discuss because how someone > subconsciously perceive a salesperson directly > effects the outcome of the salesperson’s efforts. > A black man and a white man will yield different > results pitching to the exact same clients > spitting out the exact same lines. It all depends on the audience. If the black man’s father was a member of the plumber’s union and he was pitching a pipefitter’s union, that might help. That same people would most not likely not fare well with the UHNW/country club crowd.
CFAdummy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What makes Weehawken rock? That’s were their > Employee branch is now. They are useless. I heard > that there was very little cold calling in the job > and most leads were generated by some sort of > seminar or event that they hold. What’s the > failure rate at UBS? Weehawken’s food in the cafeteria was excellent. Weehawken, W, was right next to Hoboken, and very close to NYC. you’ll have fun there. The failure rate in UBS was over 60%. Another words, over 60% leave UBS at month=10 (i.e. 6 months into production). Therefore, the *MEDIAN* career at UBS is less than 10 months.
farley013 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The only minorities I know in the retail advisory > business are ones who have a large network of > minority contacts. Otherwise minorities do not do > well with whites. On the flip side, in the > insitutional sales world there are a lot of > minorities and women. As a fund manager I > personally would rather be pitched by an Asian > woman than a white man, call me crazy. Farley, From my experiences, the retail financial advisory racket is very racist. I’m familiar with this one guy who sounds very white on the phone while at UBS in Scottsdale, Arizona. His name was also a “white-sounding” name, but he was in fact, an Indian-American (his parents are from India). He had an appointment with one older, high-networth white man from some suburb in Phoenix. When the older, xenophobic white man discovered that the this man with the “white-sounding” name was an Indo-American, he called off the meeting by asking him if he were a born-again Christian, because “[he] only does business with born-again Christians.” BTW, the Indian guy went by “Kris”, but his full name on the marketing brochures with UBS’ letterheads had him as “Krishna”. Mr.Xenophobe discovered that the “Chris” that he was speaking with was in fact a “Krishna” and game over. Moreover, I’ve never seen a black financial advisor working at UBS in Phoenix, Scottsdale, etc. Moreover, I’ve never seen one interview there as well. Within the industry, it’s a known fact that *NO BLACKS OR OTHER NON-WHITE ETHNIC MINORITIES CAN DO WELL IN THIS PREJUDICE CULTURE.*
It sucks and is something I wouldnt do, but it is the people’s money so I guess they have this right (at least in the US) to make that choice…
From what I’ve read on this thread, it appears that minorities would fair better pitching their “own” market. Furthermore, they would do better in institutional sales.
I wouldnt take it as a blanket statement either. I know an Indian and Pakistani FA that are at the top of their offices, in an area that is not necessarily dense of other their ethnicity. So it can/has/will be done, but I agree it may not be as easy for everyone.