I.H.129.Warren Buffett.Private Equity
用别人的钱赚钱会影响、侵蚀一个人的判断能力：Attention Is All You Need.。
1、《1964-07-08 Warren Buffett's Letters to Limited Partners》
These figures continue to show that the most highly paid and respected investment management has difficulty matching the performance of an unmanaged index of blue chip stocks. The results of these companies in some ways resemble the activity of a duck sitting on a pond. When the water (the market) rises, the duck rises; when it falls, back goes the duck. SPCA or no SPCA, I think the duck can only take the credit (or blame) for his own activities. The rise and fall of the lake is hardly something for him to quack about. The water level has been of great importance to B.P.L’s performance as the table on page one indicates. However, we have also occasionally flapped our wings.
大基金费用高昂、地位尊崇，道指是无人管理的一揽子蓝筹股，但是我们从这些数据中可以看出来，大基金始终跟不上指数。基金就像漂在池塘上的鸭子。水（市场）涨起来时，鸭子跟着往上涨；水（市场）落下去时，鸭子跟着往下落。不管有没有动物保护协会，鸭子的功劳大小，都要看他自己的表现，不能对池塘水位的涨跌呱呱乱叫。如上表所示，水位对巴菲特合伙基金的业绩有很大影响，不过我们一直在扑腾翅膀。
2、《2001-04-28 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
30. Promotion, not performance, is Wall Street’s biggest money maker
促销，而不是绩效，是华尔街最大的赚钱工具
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, most smart people, unfortunately, in Wall Street figure that they can make a lot more money a lot easier just by, one way or another, you know, getting an override on other people’s money or delivering services in some way that people —
沃伦·巴菲特：是的，不幸的是，华尔街上大多数聪明人认为，通过某种方式，对他人的资金抽取分成，或者提供一些所谓的服务，他们可以更轻松地赚到更多的钱。
And the monetization of hope and greed, you know, is a way to make a huge amount of money. And right now, it’s very — just take hedge funds.
将人们的希望和贪婪变现，是一种赚取巨额利润的方式。现在的对冲基金就是一个很好的例子。
I mean, it’s — I’ve had calls from a couple of friends in the last month that don’t know anything about investing money. They’ve been unsuccessful and everything else.
我最近一个月接到了几个朋友的电话，他们根本不懂投资，之前做什么都失败了。
And, you know, one of them called me the other day and said, “Well, I’m forming a small hedge fund.” A hundred and twenty-five million he was talking about.
其中一个人前几天打电话给我，说他要成立一个“小型对冲基金”，规模是1.25亿美元。
Like, the thought that since it was only 125 million, maybe we ought to put in 10 million or something of the sort.
好像因为“只是1.25亿”，我们就应该投1000万进去之类的。
I mean, if you looked at this fellow’s Schedule D on his 1040 for the last 20 years, you know, you’d think he ought to be mowing lawns. (Laughter)
如果你看一下这位朋友过去20年报税单上的资本利得申报，你会觉得他还不如去给人剪草坪。（笑声）
But he may get his 125 million. I mean, you know, it’s just astounding to me how willing people are, during a bull market, just to toss money around, because, you know, they think it’s easy.
但他可能真的会筹到这1.25亿。令人震惊的是，在牛市中，人们总是愿意随意撒钱，因为他们觉得赚钱很容易。
And of course, that’s what they felt about internet stocks a few years ago. They’ll think it about something else next year, too.
当然，几年前他们对互联网股票也是这么想的。明年，他们还会把这种想法寄托在别的东西上。
But the biggest money made, you know, in Wall Street in recent years, has not been made by great performance, but it’s been made by great promotion, basically.
不过，近年来，华尔街赚到的最大一笔钱，基本上不是靠出色的业绩，而是靠出色的推销。
Charlie, do you have anything?
查理，你怎么看？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I would state it even more strongly. I think the current scene is obscene.
查理·芒格：嗯，我会说得更直接一些。我认为当前的情形简直是丑陋不堪。
I think there’s too much mania. There’s too much chasing after easy money. There’s too much misleading sales material about investments.
现在的市场充斥着过度的狂热，过度追逐轻松赚快钱的心态，过多关于投资的误导性推销材料。
There’s too much on the television emphasizing speculation in stocks.
电视上过多地宣传股票投机行为。
3、《2004-05-01 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
WARREN BUFFETT: It — just the idea of taking two percent, you know, plus percentages on top of that, that reflects — you know, it may be what the traffic can bear, you know, Collis P. Huntington style, but that reflects an attitude toward people that we tend to regard as partners, investors — I just think it’s a basically unfair type of arrangement.
沃伦·巴菲特：仅仅是收取 2% 的费用，然后在上面加上百分比，这反映了——你知道，这可能是市场所能承受的，你知道，柯利斯·P·亨廷顿式的，但这反映了一种对我们倾向于作为合作伙伴、投资者看待的人的态度——我只是认为这是一种从根本上不公平的安排。
And I don’t like getting in — in general, I think it’s a mistake to get in with people who propose unfair arrangements.
而且我不喜欢参与——总的来说，我认为与提出不公平安排的人合作是一个错误。
You know, in effect they’re getting — probably getting four times standard fees to begin with. And then on top of that, they say we want part of the action. And I would guess in many of those cases, that they don’t have all of their own money in the fund themselves. Maybe they have a substantial sum outside.
你知道，实际上他们一开始可能就获得了四倍的标准费用。而且在此基础上，他们还说我们想要分一杯羹。我猜在很多情况下，他们自己并没有把所有的钱都投入到基金中。也许他们在外面有一大笔钱。
Charlie and I both run — ran — partnerships in the ’60s, and ‘50s with me, and into the ’70s with him, that would generally be classified as hedge funds. They had the compensation arrangement somewhat similar, although not like they are now. And we did some —
查理和我都在 60 年代经营——过去经营——合伙企业，我是在 50 年代，他是在 70 年代，这些合伙企业通常被归类为对冲基金。它们的补偿安排有些相似，尽管不像现在这样。而且我们做了一些——
They had some similarities, but I don’t think we had quite the attitude toward the people who were trying to — that were asking to join us — that the present managers have. It’s —
他们有一些相似之处，但我认为我们对那些想要加入我们的人——那些请求加入我们的人——的态度并不像现在的管理者那样。它是——
As Charlie said, the fund-to-funds type stuff, I mean, it’s really sort of unbelievable just piling on layer after layer on costs. It doesn’t make the companies that are underlying these stocks they buy any better. I mean, it —
正如查理所说，基金中的基金类型的东西，我的意思是，这真的是在成本上层层叠加，令人难以置信。这并不会让他们购买的这些股票背后的公司变得更好。我的意思是，它——
And believe me, people don’t become a genius just because you walk into some office, and it says “hedge funds” on the door. I mean they are — what they may be very good at is marketing. In fact, if they’re good at marketing, they don’t have to be good at anything else.
相信我，人们不会因为你走进某个办公室，门上写着“对冲基金”就变成天才。我的意思是，他们可能非常擅长的是营销。事实上，如果他们擅长营销，他们不需要擅长其他任何事情。
4、《2006-05-06 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
WARREN BUFFETT: That’s interesting, and I didn’t know they put themselves up for sale. But I looked at it — whenever it was — four or five years ago when Terry Watanabe sold it.
沃伦·巴菲特：这很有趣，我不知道他们把自己挂牌出售。但我查看过——不管是什么时候——大约四五年前，当时Terry Watanabe卖掉了它。
And I haven’t really followed it since then, but just from listening to what you say — and I have no knowledge of it at all — but it sounds to me as if some private group bought it and now they’re reselling it.
从那以后我就没有真正关注过，但仅仅从听你说的话来看——我对此完全不了解——但在我看来，好像是某个私募基金买下了它，现在他们正在转售。
And we get approached on that sort of thing all the time, where a financial group has bought the business and then wants to resell it fairly quickly. And they almost — well, they invariably, I would say — auction the business.
我们经常遇到这种情况，一个金融集团收购了企业，然后希望相当快地转售它。而且他们几乎——我可以说是总是——拍卖这个企业。
They seek what they call a strategic buyer. A strategic buyer is some guy that pays too much. (Laughter) Because — you know, and he wants to justify it, so he says it’s strategic. I mean, I have never understood being a strategic buyer.
他们寻找他们所谓的战略买家。战略买家就是一个出价过高的人。（笑声）因为——你知道，他想为此辩解，所以他说这是战略性的。我的意思是，我从来没有理解过成为一个战略买家。
Every time somebody calls me up and says, you know, “We think, maybe, you’re the logical strategic buyer for that,” you know, I hang up faster than Charlie would. (Laughter)
每次有人打电话给我，说，“我们认为，也许你是那个合适的战略买家，”我挂电话的速度比查理还快。（笑声）
The — and I’m not talking to the specifics of this one at all because I really don’t know on Oriental Trading.
我对这个具体情况不了解，所以我不谈论东方贸易。
But the idea that we’re going to find a business to buy from some guy who, from the moment he bought it a few years ago, has been thinking, “How do I get out of this thing?”
但是，我们要从一个几年前买下这家企业后就一直在想“我该如何摆脱这个东西？”的人那里找到一个可以购买的企业，这种想法是不现实的。
You know, “What do I do to make it earn — have those figures for a couple years look a certain way so that I can get the maximum amount in a couple years?” You know, that — we’re just not going to make any attractive buys there. We won’t trust the figures.
你知道，“我该怎么做才能让它盈利——让那些数字在几年内看起来某种方式，以便我能在几年内获得最大收益？”你知道，那——我们在那里不会做任何有吸引力的购买。我们不会相信这些数字。
You know, we — it just — it’s — what we like is a business that — where the guy before was running with the idea of running it a hundred years, and taking care of the business in every way possible and was not contemplating sale, but, for one reason or another, finally needs to monetize the company.
你知道，我们——这只是——我们喜欢的生意是——前任经营者以经营一百年的理念来管理，并尽一切可能照顾业务，并没有考虑出售，但由于某种原因，最终需要将公司货币化。
We won’t — we will not get any sensible buys, really, from the resellers.
我们不会——我们真的不会从转售商那里得到任何合理的购买。
Some of the — it’s amazing to me what’s going on. Some of these things, literally, you know, Fund A is selling to Fund B to Fund C.
有些事情——对我来说，正在发生的事情真是令人惊讶。其中一些事情，实际上，你知道，基金 A 卖给基金 B，再卖给基金 C。
I mean, I’ve seen some that have changed hands three or four times. They’re just marking them up, and everybody’s getting two — they’re getting 20 percent of the profit so they mark it up.
我的意思是，我见过一些已经转手三四次的。他们只是加价，每个人都拿到两成——他们拿到 20%的利润，所以他们加价。
And probably Fund C or Fund D may be owned by the same pension funds that own Fund A, except that everybody’s just taking a big 20 percent slice out of it every time they move it from one place to another.
而且可能基金 C 或基金 D 由拥有基金 A 的同一养老金基金持有，只是每次从一个地方转移到另一个地方时，每个人都从中抽取了 20% 的大份额。
We’re not buyers of anything the financial buyers have been in in recent — you know, and currently own.
我们不购买金融买家最近参与并目前拥有的任何东西。
5、《2007-05-05 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, as you were reading off that list, we are competing with those people, so I started to cry as you — (laughs) — explained the difficulty we have in finding things to buy.
沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，当你读到那份名单时，我们正在与那些人竞争，所以当你解释我们在寻找购买东西时遇到的困难时，我开始哭了（笑）。
The nature of the private equity activity is such that it really isn’t a bubble that bursts.
私募股权活动的性质决定了它实际上不是一个会破裂的泡沫。
Because if you’re running a large private equity fund and you lock up $20 billion for five or longer years and you buy businesses which are not priced daily, as a practical matter, the plug will not — even if you do a poor job, it’s going to take many years before the score is put up on the score board, and it takes many years, in most cases, for people to get out of the private equity fund even if they wished to earlier.
因为如果你在运营一个大型私募股权基金，并且将 200 亿美元锁定五年或更长时间，并购买那些不每日定价的企业，实际上，即使你做得不好，也需要很多年才能在记分板上显示出成绩，并且在大多数情况下，即使人们希望提前退出，也需要很多年才能从私募股权基金中退出。
So it does not — it’s not like a lot of leverage can lead to in-marketable securities or something there. And the investors can’t leave and the scorecard is lacking for a long time.
所以这并不是——这不像大量杠杆会导致不可销售的证券或类似的情况。而且投资者无法退出，评分卡长期以来一直缺乏。
What will slow down the activity — or what could slow down the activity — is if yields on junk bonds became much higher than yields on high-grade bonds.
什么会减缓这种活动——或者说，什么可能会减缓这种活动——是如果垃圾债券的收益率比高等级债券的收益率高得多。
Right now the spread between yields on junk bonds and high-grade bonds is down to a very low level, and history has shown that periodically that spread widens quite dramatically.
目前，垃圾债券和高等级债券收益率之间的利差已降至非常低的水平，而历史表明，这种利差会周期性地显著扩大。
That will slow down the deals, but it won’t cause the investors to get their money back.
这会减缓交易进程，但不会导致投资者收回他们的钱。
There’s one other aspect, of course, that — of this frenzied activity, you might say, in private equity is that if you have a $20 billion fund and you’re getting a 2 percent fee on it or $400 million a year, which seems like chump change to those that are managing them but sounds like real money in Omaha — if you’re getting 400 million a year from that $20 billion fund, you can’t start another fund with a straight face until you get that money pretty well invested.
当然，这种疯狂活动的另一个方面是，如果你有一个 200 亿美元的基金，并从中获得 2%的费用，即每年 4 亿美元，这对管理它们的人来说似乎是小钱，但在奥马哈听起来像是真正的钱——如果你每年从那个 200 亿美元的基金中获得 4 亿美元，你就不能在没有把这笔钱很好地投资之前，面不改色地开始另一个基金。
It’s very hard to go back to your investors and say, well, I’ve got 18 billion uninvested and I’d like you to give me money for another fund.
很难回到你的投资者面前说，我有 180 亿未投资的资金，我希望你能给我另一只基金的钱。
So there’s a great compulsion to invest very quickly because it’s the way to get another fund and another bunch of fees coming in.
所以有一种强烈的动力去非常迅速地投资，因为这是获取另一个基金和一堆费用的方式。
And those are not competitors for businesses that Charlie and I are going to be particularly effective in competing with.
那些企业并不是查理和我会特别有效地与之竞争的竞争对手。
I mean, they — we are going to own anything we buy forever. The math has to make sense to us. We’re not given to optimistic assumptions, and we don’t get paid based on activity.
我的意思是，他们——我们买的任何东西都将永远属于我们。数学必须对我们有意义。我们不会做乐观的假设，我们的报酬也不是基于活动。
But I think it will be quite some time before — it’s likely to be quite some time — before disillusionment sets in and the money quits flowing to these people that are promoting these. And whether they can continue to make deals will depend on whether people will give them lots of financing at what I would regard as quite low rates.
但我认为，直到——很可能会有相当长的一段时间——幻灭感才会出现，资金才会停止流向那些推广这些的人。而他们能否继续做交易，将取决于人们是否会以我认为相当低的利率为他们提供大量融资。
6、《2024-11-04 Why $11 Trillion in Assets Isn’t Enough for BlackRock’s Larry Fink》
Firms such as Blackstone, Apollo Global Management and KKR manage just a fraction of BlackRock’s $11.5 trillion in assets. Yet those rivals command market values that are in the ballpark of BlackRock’s, which is around $150 billion.
像 Blackstone、Apollo Global Management和KKR这样的公司管理的资产仅是贝莱德 11.5 万亿美元资产的一小部分。然而，这些竞争对手的市值与贝莱德的相当，约为 1500 亿美元。
The reason: Private-market funds can charge more than BlackRock gets for much of its plain-vanilla, index-based funds. And the market rewards that.
原因：私人市场基金的收费可以超过贝莱德的大部分普通指数基金。市场对此给予了回报。
Over the past one, three and five years, shares of Blackstone, Apollo and KKR have handily outperformed those of BlackRock. To change that, Fink is taking an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach, largely through acquisitions.
在过去的一年、三年和五年中，黑石、阿波罗和 KKR 的股票表现远远优于贝莱德。为了改变这一点，芬克采取了“如果你打不过他们，就加入他们”的策略，主要通过收购来实现。
7、《2024-11-18 AI Investments Are Booming, but Venture-Firm Profits Are at a Historic Low》
In September, Sequoia Capital bought $861 million of its own shares in payments company Stripe held by a set of funds it launched over a decade ago. This allowed investors in the older funds to earn a profit, while Sequoia is holding the shares through a newer set of funds. Sequoia first backed Stripe in 2010.
今年九月，红杉资本从其十多年前设立的一组基金中购买了价值 8.61 亿美元的支付公司 Stripe 的自有股份。这使得老基金的投资者获得了利润，而红杉则通过一组新的基金持有这些股份。红杉在 2010 年首次支持 Stripe。
8、《2024-11-25 Federal Prosecutors Charge Star Bond Investor Ken Leech With Fraud》
Federal prosecutors on Monday charged longtime bond investor Ken Leech with fraud, alleging he cherry-picked a series of trades to favor some clients while shifting losses to others.
联邦检察官周一指控长期债券投资者 Ken Leech 犯有欺诈罪，指控称他挑选了一系列交易以偏袒某些客户，同时将损失转移给其他客户。
Leech, the former chief investment officer and star trader at Franklin Templeton BEN 3.46%increase; green up pointing triangle subsidiary Western Asset Management, allegedly assigned over $600 million in gains to favored clients and $600 million in losses to others, according to an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court Monday.
根据周一在曼哈顿联邦法院解封的起诉书，富兰克林邓普顿 BEN 3.46%increase; green up pointing triangle子公司 Western Asset Management 的前首席投资官和明星交易员 Leech 据称将超过 6 亿美元的收益分配给了受宠客户，而将 6 亿美元的损失分配给了其他客户。
9、《2025-01-18 The Year That Hedge Funds Got Their Mojo Back》
Hedge funds are having a moment. Will it last?
对冲基金正迎来高光时刻。这会持续吗？
In a year when everything seemed to go up, the industry generated some of its strongest, and most consistent, returns in a decade. The big question for investors: Was 2024 a turning point, or will the recent trend of so-so—and sometimes dismal—returns quickly reassert itself?
在一切似乎都在上涨的一年里，该行业创造了十年来最强劲、最稳定的一些回报。投资者面临的重大问题是：2024 年是一个转折点，还是最近平平甚至有时糟糕的回报趋势会迅速重现？
On average, hedge funds gained 10.7% after fees last year, according to an index from PivotalPath tracking more than 1,100 funds. That was the best year since 2020, when they made 11.4% amid pandemic-fueled volatility. Before that, the last time the industry saw double-digit gains was 2013.
根据 PivotalPath 追踪超过 1,100 只基金的指数显示，去年对冲基金在扣除费用后平均收益为 10.7%。这是自 2020 年以来的最佳年份，当时由于疫情引发的波动，他们获得了 11.4%的收益。在此之前，该行业上一次实现两位数增长是在 2013 年。
It is a welcome showing for an industry that has faced growing competition for investor dollars from areas such as private credit, plus criticism for charging high fees while often delivering middling returns. Even with last year’s strong outturn, the hedge-fund industry still delivered less than half of the S&P 500’s 25% total return, including dividends.
对于一个面临来自私人信贷等领域的投资者资金竞争加剧的行业来说，这是一个受欢迎的表现，同时也因收取高额费用而常常只提供中等回报而受到批评。即使去年表现强劲，对冲基金行业的回报仍不到标普 500 指数 25%总回报（包括股息）的一半。
相当于在夜场里卖酒水，因为有小姐的贴身服务，同样的酒水就是要卖的贵一点。
Hedge-fund firms say they aren’t simply trying to beat indexes. Instead, they focus on making money no matter if broader markets rise or fall. Their appeal to big investors, such as pension funds and endowments, is that they try to protect money during downturns and generate returns that aren’t correlated to investors’ other holdings.
对冲基金公司表示，他们并不仅仅是试图击败指数。相反，他们专注于赚钱，无论大盘是上涨还是下跌。它们对大型投资者（如养老基金和捐赠基金）的吸引力在于，它们试图在经济低迷时期保护资金，并产生与投资者其他持股不相关的回报。
Big Four
四大
Last month, I compared the big multimanager multistrategy hedge funds to investment banks. The argument I made is that the big multistrategy funds are not exactly “hedge funds” in the traditional sense — that is, investment vehicles that raise money from limited partners, make investments, and give the limited partners the performance of the investments minus fees. Instead, they are more like investment banks: They raise money from the LPs, use the money to do trades, and use the profits from those trades to pay their employees, giving what is left over to the LPs. You can tell because traditionally hedge funds charged fees like “2% of assets and 20% of returns,” while the big multistrategy funds — often called “platforms” or “pod shops” — charge fees like “we will deduct whatever it costs us to run our fund, mostly employee pay, from what we give you.” These are called “pass-through fees.”
上个月，我将大型多经理、多策略对冲基金与投资银行进行了比较。我提出的观点是，这些大型多策略基金并非传统意义上的“对冲基金”——即从有限合伙人那里募集资金，进行投资，并将投资表现扣除费用后返还给有限合伙人的投资工具。相反，它们更像投资银行：它们从有限合伙人那里募集资金，用这些资金进行交易，再用交易所得利润支付员工薪酬，然后将剩余部分返还给有限合伙人。你可以从收费模式看出这一点：传统对冲基金通常收取“资产规模的 2%加收益的 20%”这样的费用，而大型多策略基金（通常被称为“平台”或“团队型基金”）则采用“我们会从返还给你的资金中扣除运营基金的所有成本，主要是员工薪酬”的收费模式。这种收费模式被称为“转嫁费用”。
I got some objections to this comparison. One objection is: If you invest in the stock of an investment bank, you are making a bet on the bank’s franchise value. If the bank has a good track record of making money for shareholders, the stock goes up.3 At a multistrategy hedge fund, the limited partners don’t get that. If the fund has a great track record of making money for LPs, it’s not like the LPs can sell their stakes in the fund at a premium. It’s more likely that they’ll get cashed out at par, as the fund returns capital and moves toward the great ideal of becoming a family office.
我对这种比较有一些异议。其中一个异议是：如果你投资一家投资银行的股票，你是在押注该银行的品牌价值。如果该银行有良好的为股东赚钱的历史记录，股价就会上涨。而在多策略对冲基金中，有限合伙人并不会得到这种好处。如果基金有出色的为有限合伙人赚钱的历史记录，有限合伙人并不能以溢价出售他们在基金中的份额。更可能的情况是，他们会以面值被赎回，因为基金会返还资本，并逐渐向成为家族办公室的理想目标迈进。
That’s a little odd, no? There is a lot of demand for those LP stakes; they kind of ought to trade at a premium. Here’s a fun Business Insider story about the growing dominance of the “big four” multistrategy funds — Millennium, Citadel, Point72, and Balyasny — that features this statistic:
这有点奇怪，不是吗？这些有限合伙权益的需求很大；它们本应以溢价交易。以下是《商业内幕》一篇有趣的报道，讲述了“四大”多策略基金（Millennium、Citadel、Point72 和 Balyasny）日益增强的主导地位，其中提到了这样一个统计数据
Point72 and Citadel have returned capital to investors, and Millennium can command a five-year lockup period for new money, a term length previously unheard of in the hedge fund world. One allocator told BI that Point72, the $39 billion firm run by the billionaire New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, had a $9 billion waitlist — which is more capital than firms like Eisler and Walleye manage.
Point72 和 Citadel 已向投资者返还资金，而 Millennium 则能对新资金要求五年锁定期，这在对冲基金领域此前闻所未闻。一位资金配置者告诉 BI，由亿万富翁、纽约大都会队老板史蒂夫·科恩管理的规模达 390 亿美元的 Point72 公司，其候补资金规模已达 90 亿美元，这一数额超过了 Eisler 和 Walleye 等公司管理的资金规模。
The demand to invest with Point72 — to give Point72 your money and take back whatever Point72 wants to give you, net of whatever fees it wants to charge — is greater than the supply; surely some aspiring investors would pay 110 cents on the dollar (to existing investors) to get off the waitlist, if only they were allowed to.
投资者希望将资金投入 Point72，即便意味着由 Point72 决定返还多少资金，并扣除其自行设定的费用，这种需求已超过供应；如果允许的话，一些渴望投资的人肯定愿意以每美元 110 美分的价格（支付给现有投资者）来摆脱等待名单。
Anyway the whole article is interesting, and fits with the thesis that the multistrategy platforms are institutional successors to investment banks:
无论如何，整篇文章都很有趣，并且符合多策略平台正逐渐成为投资银行机构继任者这一论点：
Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage desk, using regulatory filings, estimated in July that 53 multistrategy firms employed a total of 18,600 people. More than 71% of them worked for one of the big four, leaving the 49 other funds with a combined head count smaller than Millennium's. …
根据监管文件，高盛的主经纪业务部门在 7 月份估计，53 家多策略公司共雇佣了 18,600 人。其中超过 71%的员工效力于四大公司之一，其余 49 家基金的员工总数加起来还不及 Millennium 一家。
"They're becoming more and more like investment banks to an extent," said one platform founder with less than $10 billion in total assets. Others in the industry likened Citadel in particular to pre-IPO Goldman Sachs — a comparison Ken Griffin would most likely welcome, given his laudatory comments about the firm.
“一定程度上，他们越来越像投资银行了，”一位管理资产总额不到 100 亿美元的平台创始人表示。业内其他人士尤其将 Citadel 比作上市前的高盛（Goldman Sachs）——鉴于肯·格里芬（Ken Griffin）曾对该公司赞誉有加，他很可能乐于接受这种比较。
There is also a suggestion that the big platforms are qualitatively different from other hedge funds, that they are offering a different product entirely, and that if you can’t get into their funds you will choose, not some other hedge fund, but a different asset class:
还有一种观点认为，这些大型平台与其他对冲基金在本质上有所不同，它们提供的是一种完全不同的产品，如果你无法进入它们的基金，你将不会选择其他对冲基金，而是选择另一种资产类别：
A different allocator compared the concentration of capital in the four largest firms to passive investing, in which all the assets flow to Vanguard, BlackRock, or State Street.
另一位资产配置者将资本集中于四家最大公司的情况与被动投资进行了比较，即所有资产都流向先锋集团、贝莱德或道富集团。
"For people who can't get into the top guys, they're saying they'll just invest in some other structure or asset class instead," this person said, pointing to private credit as a landing spot for some of this capital.
“对于那些无法进入顶级基金的人来说，他们表示会转而投资其他结构或资产类别，”这位人士说道，并指出私人信贷成为了部分资金的去处。
And: 以及：
A February report from JPMorgan's capital advisory team said hedge funds with assets between $500 million and $5 billion had net outflows of $21.5 billion in the past two years, while firms with assets greater than $5 billion hauled in $12.2 billion in net new money. …
摩根大通资本顾问团队 2 月份的一份报告称，过去两年间，资产规模在 5 亿美元至 50 亿美元之间的对冲基金净流出 215 亿美元，而资产规模超过 50 亿美元的公司则净流入了 122 亿美元的新资金。
"If you're going to compete with Citadel and Millennium in their own backyard, you're already dead," one person who's building out their multistrategy offering told BI.
“一位正在建立自己多策略业务的人士告诉 BI：‘如果你打算在 Citadel 和 Millennium 的主场与他们竞争，那你已经输了。’”
They added, "Do you have a right to exist — or are you on borrowed time because you raised money when all multistrats could raise money?"
他们补充道：“你是否有生存的权利，还是说你只是因为在所有多策略基金都能筹到资金的时候筹到了钱，而在苟延残喘？”
I sometimes argue that the essential thing that gives a hedge fund the right to exist is that it raises money when the raising is good, not that it makes good trades, but I appreciate the self-reflection here.
我有时会认为，对冲基金存在的根本理由在于它在融资环境良好时筹集资金，而非进行成功的交易，但我欣赏这里的自我反思。
Strategic Holdings
战略控股
One way to tell the story of private equity is that, half a century ago, a few smart people had one essential, surprising, and wildly lucrative insight: “Companies should be more levered.” In the 1970s and 1980s, there were lots of sleepy inefficient companies whose capital structures had too much equity and not enough debt; they had lazy managers who didn’t care much about increasing value; they had steady reliable cash flows that their managers wasted on vanity projects.
讲述私募股权故事的一种方式是，半个世纪前，一些聪明人有一个基本的、令人惊讶且极其有利可图的见解：“公司应该增加杠杆。”在 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代，有许多效率低下、毫无生气的公司，其资本结构中股权过多而债务不足；他们有懒散的管理者，不太关心提升价值；他们拥有稳定可靠的现金流，但管理者却将其浪费在虚荣项目上。
巴菲特自己也做过，只是这些私募基金的做法更加粗暴，纯粹冲着融资，通过融资榨取资金，然后交易下一个目标。
A few people noticed — two of the most famous were Henry Kravis and George Roberts3 — and figured they could do better. They could run more efficient capital structures, they could give managers bigger equity stakes to align incentives, they could sell off underperforming divisions, they could pay the cash flows out to shareholders. But to do this — and profit from its success — they would need to buy the companies themselves. This was hard because they were just some guys. They didn’t have billions of dollars.
有几个人注意到了这一点——其中两位最著名的是亨利·克拉维斯和乔治·罗伯茨——他们认为自己可以做得更好。他们可以运营更高效的资本结构，可以给予管理者更大的股权以激励他们，可以剥离表现不佳的部门，可以将现金流分配给股东。但要做到这一点——并从成功中获利——他们需要自己买下这些公司。这很难，因为他们只是一些普通人，没有数十亿美元的资金。
But their essential insight about leverage suggested the solution to this problem: They could borrow the money to buy the companies. This is called a “leveraged buyout,” or LBO. The companies were sleepy and inefficient, but they had good businesses and steady cash flows and not much debt; banks would lend them a lot of money. So the Kravises and Roberts of the world could buy the companies with money they borrowed from banks, secured by the companies they were buying, just like buying a house with a mortgage. They didn’t need much money of their own. And the world was rich with targets — lots of inefficient companies — and there was not a lot of competition, because it was all new and risky and surprising.
但他们关于杠杆的基本见解提出了解决这个问题的方法：他们可以借钱来收购公司。这被称为“杠杆收购”，或 LBO。这些公司运作迟缓且效率低下，但它们拥有良好的业务和稳定的现金流，且负债不多；银行愿意借给它们大量资金。因此，克拉维斯和罗伯茨等人可以用从银行借来的钱购买这些公司，这些钱以他们购买的公司作为担保，就像用抵押贷款买房一样。他们自己不需要投入太多资金。市场上有大量目标公司——许多效率低下的公司——而且竞争不多，因为这是一项全新且风险大、令人惊讶的业务。
So they could raise funds from investors, borrow money, buy companies, sell the bad bits, align incentives, spruce them up, pay down the debt, sell the companies (or take them public) and return tons of cash to the investors. This is called “private equity.”
因此，他们可以从投资者那里筹集资金，借钱，收购公司，剥离不良资产，调整激励机制，改善公司状况，偿还债务，出售公司（或将其上市），并向投资者返还大量现金。这被称为“私募股权”。
It is traditionally not exactly a short-term business, but not exactly a long-term one either. The job is not to find good companies and own them forever, but to buy cheap companies, fix them up and flip them. The goal is to earn a spread, to buy inefficient companies cheaply, make them efficient quickly, and then sell them at a higher price.
这传统上并不完全是一个短期业务，但也不完全是一个长期业务。工作不是找到好公司并永远拥有它们，而是买入廉价公司，修复它们然后转手。目标是赚取差价，低价买入效率低下的公司，迅速使其高效，然后以更高的价格卖出。
交易不会带来长期价值。
This worked extremely well, with the following consequences:
这非常有效，带来了以下后果：
1.Kravis and Roberts and many of their contemporaries now have lots of money, both in the sense that they are personally very wealthy and in the sense that they now run firms with hundreds of billions of dollars of assets under management. Kravis and Roberts are founders of KKR & Co., which has about $195 billion of private equity assets under management.
克拉维斯和罗伯茨以及他们的许多同时代人现在拥有大量财富，无论是他们个人非常富有，还是他们管理着数千亿美元资产的公司。克拉维斯和罗伯茨是 KKR 公司的创始人，该公司管理着约 1950 亿美元的私募股权资产。
2.There is now huge competition to do leveraged buyouts, both in the sense that there are a number of big firms that compete to do deals, and in the sense that every young person in finance is competing to get hired by those firms, which are now the default ideal financial employers.
现在进行杠杆收购的竞争非常激烈，既有许多大型公司竞争交易，也有每个金融行业的年轻人竞争被这些公司录用，这些公司现已成为理想的金融雇主。
3.Most of the sleepy, inefficient, under-levered companies with steady cash flows are gone, some because private equity firms took them private and spruced them up, and others because they responded to the private-equity zeitgeist by sprucing themselves up, borrowing money and aligning incentives and generally becoming more like private equity companies.
大多数那些沉睡、效率低下、杠杆率低但现金流稳定的公司已经消失了，有些是因为私募股权公司将它们私有化并进行了整顿，另一些则是因为它们响应了私募股权的时代精神，通过整顿自身、借款、调整激励机制，整体上变得更像私募股权公司。
Then what? The original private equity founders were in a scrappy business of picking low-hanging fruit; now they run huge institutions and a lot of that low-hanging fruit is gone.4 Every top business school graduate wants to work for them, and every institutional allocator wants to give them money, because of the generational profits they made with the essential insight of “companies could be much more levered,” but that insight is not as lucrative now as it was when they made all that money.
然后呢？最初的私募股权创始人从事的是挑选唾手可得的果实的艰苦业务；现在他们经营着庞大的机构，而许多唾手可得的果实已经消失。每个顶尖商学院的毕业生都想为他们工作，每个机构配置者都想给他们资金，因为他们凭借“公司可以大幅加杠杆”的关键洞察赚取了代际利润，但这一洞察现在并不像他们赚取那些钱时那么有利可图。
On the other hand, they do run huge institutions. They parlayed their essential insight into giant piles of money and lots of smart ambitious employees. If have all that money and smarts, there has to be something useful you can do with them. What? “Private credit” is an important answer: If you’re a big successful asset manager, you can manage lots of assets and expand into credit. But there are other answers. You can … just … do a good job of managing normal companies? Just, like, be an industrial conglomerate, but with really smart mid-level executives and really rich senior ones? Bloomberg’s Allison McNeely reports:
另一方面，他们确实经营着庞大的机构。他们将其基本洞察力转化为巨额财富和大量聪明且有抱负的员工。如果拥有所有这些资金和智慧，肯定可以用它们做些有用的事情。什么呢？“私募信贷”是一个重要的答案：如果你是一个大型成功的资产管理者，你可以管理大量资产并扩展到信贷领域。但还有其他答案。你可以……只是……做好管理普通公司的工作？就像成为一个工业集团，但拥有真正聪明的中层管理人员和非常富有的高级管理人员？彭博社的艾莉森·麦克尼利报道：
KKR & Co.’s plan to break from the traditional buyout model and hold some bets on its own books for decades is being directed by a tight-knit group, including co-founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts.
KKR & Co.打破传统收购模式，计划将部分投资长期持有数十年，这一计划由包括联合创始人亨利·克拉维斯和乔治·罗伯茨在内的一个紧密团队指导。
The alternative asset manager’s Strategic Holdings unit, launched a little over a year ago, is a key part of KKR’s plan to more than quadruple earnings per share over the next decade. The firm sees a chance to build a portfolio that kicks off more than $1 billion a year in dividends.
这家另类资产管理公司的战略控股部门成立刚刚一年多，是 KKR 计划在未来十年内将每股收益提高四倍以上的关键部分。该公司看到有机会建立一个每年启动超过 10 亿美元股息的投资组合。
What the firm is trying to create “is in some ways a mini Berkshire Hathaway,” Co-Chief Executive Officer Joe Bae said at the Bloomberg Invest conference in New York earlier this month. …
该公司试图打造的“在某种程度上是一个迷你版的伯克希尔·哈撒韦，”联合首席执行官乔·裴本月早些时候在纽约彭博投资大会上表示。…
The unit currently holds stakes in 18 long-term investments that are expected to compound over time instead of being flipped for a quick profit. Bae said this month that the firm intends to add infrastructure and real assets to the mix.
该部门目前持有 18 项长期投资的股份，预计这些投资将随着时间的推移复利增长，而不是为了快速获利而出售。贝本月表示，公司计划将基础设施和实物资产纳入投资组合。
KKR says the upside for patient investors could be massive. The firm has pointed out that Berkshire is worth almost as much as all the publicly traded asset managers in the world combined. But it’s a long-term bet that will require capital now. KKR cut its share buybacks to zero last year and paid out a lower portion of its earnings as dividends than any of its major competitors.
KKR 表示，耐心投资者的潜在收益可能巨大。该公司指出，伯克希尔的价值几乎与全球所有上市资产管理公司的总和相当。但这是一项需要现在投入资本的长期赌注。KKR 去年将股票回购降至零，并且支付的股息占收益的比例低于其所有主要竞争对手。
交易无法战胜长期价值。
Yes, right, the opportunity to buy underperforming companies and flip them for huge profits in five years has decreased, but KKR’s pile of cash has increased, so there are other things it can do.
是的，没错，购买表现不佳的公司并在五年内高价转手获利的机会减少了，但 KKR 的现金储备增加了，因此它还有其他可以做的事情。
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