From Biotech to Asset Management with Sunaina Sinha

25:26The operating environment might change, but the characteristics of the business and how you drive value in that business will often be very similar. So you've got to make sure you're either a sector or a regional expert, and that often depends on the size of business you buy. So you've lived in Africa, you've lived in India, you've lived in Vietnam, you've been to Thailand and all over Asia. Yes. Have you thought of expanding to some of these other continents, or is it just US and Europe? We do cover Asian and Middle Eastern investors in my business prolifically and have done from almost the first day of inception.

25:59You cannot ignore the rest of the world. As you know, the sovereign wealth funds and the institutions of the Middle East are big movers in the market today. And that's today. I started covering Middle Eastern institutions when I first opened the doors of the business now 14 years ago. And 14 years ago, people were like, I don't know if I need to go over there. It's a huge investment of time and airfare and so forth. Well, now everyone's saying, I wish I'd built those relationships long ago because relationships die hard in those markets, Asia and Middle East. And those relationships I've had and my team has had for a long time.

26:35So let's talk a little bit about valuation. In the public markets, hard to say fourth quarter 2024 US markets aren't at the very least fully priced, if not richly priced. When we look at the UK, when we look at Europe, much, much less expensive. We see a lot of companies trading at book value, not the same growth level that we see in the U.S. Does that valuation difference in the public markets extend to private markets as well? So firstly, let's comment on the public market side. That is characterized very much, that valuation gap is characterized by the depth of the markets. The U.S. capital markets, vibrant, incredibly dynamic, incredible fragmentation of investors, deep, rich market where you can do business on the capital market size pretty seamlessly.

27:26And I would add, plus all these giant mega tech companies that certainly have rich valuations in SKU, whether it's the NASDAQ 100 or the S &P 500. Yes. You know, there's a handful of them overseas, Taiwan Semiconductor, ASM Lithography. You can name SAP. You can name like a handful. But most of the big ones are here, which certainly skews the – Skew the valuation. On the public side, what do you see on the private side? On the private side, we see a similar valuation gap. And I'll just finish the public market side. The U.K. and the European capital markets just don't have the same depth, which is why you see the valuation mispricing.

28:03So you think it's more than just the tech companies. It's the structure. It's structural. There's not that many participants. It's also legal and regulatory, right? In the UK, there was a move away from holding UK assets by the UK pension plans. That sucked the liquidity out of the UK markets, hence the valuation gap. So there's also regulatory angles that are at play there. On the private markets, though, I've got to agree with you entirely. There is a valuation arbitrage even in the private markets. That the European buyout specialists are able to buy companies at better value in Europe and scale them into global businesses and sell them at global valuations or U.S.

28:44market valuations when it comes down to selling time. So some of the biggest, best private equity household names that you know, whether it's a Blackstone or an Apex or a Clayton Dublian Rice, have headquarters both sides of the pond because there's so much value to be harvested by buying smartly in Europe and an advantage, quite honestly, a valuation arbitrage that you can play all day long and many of them do so very successfully. So you're advising a lot of players in the private equity market. Is it general partners, GPs, the funds that are essentially running? Are they LPs and investors or do you advise across the whole spectrum?

29:23We sit in between the GPs and their LPs. When it comes to, and we will raise everything from a small, for us would be a$250 million fund and our largest client raised$27 billion in their last fund, okay? and everybody in between. In the last year alone, we raised north of$4 billion of new capital commitments for our clients and are very prolific at ensuring that private equity general partners raise the capital they need to go off and buy businesses and build the ecosystems around each of their businesses. So we sit right in between general partners and limited partners, got a team of over 60 people, seven offices raising capital for our clients, but also intermediating in the liquidity side of the equation in private markets.

30:08As you know, in the public markets, the secondary issuance market is much larger than the primary issuance market. In private markets today, it's flipped. Explain what you mean by that. How is that flipped? Well, in private markets today, there is a$1.6 trillion new capital raising engine that hums along annually. That's how much capital is raised across private market funds in a 12-month rolling cycle. And to just put a little flesh on that, go back to before you launched Seabroal, private equity was a trillion dollars. Now it's 10, 12 trillion, and it's projected to go up to 20-something trillion.

30:50Absolutely. So this has certainly been ramping up rapidly. Indeed. And your timing was quite fortuitous launching in 2011. Yes, very lucky to have launched then. But you're absolutely right. But the secondaries market in private markets is only$140,$150 billion in size, but growing rapidly. That market, when we first did our first secondaries transaction as a firm in 2012, was only$20 billion, a drop in the bucket. Today, it's$150 billion, still small compared to the size of the primary private equity market. But these investors want liquidity too, Barry. You could have held something eight years, nine years, 10 years.

31:28You want out. Who do you go to? You've got to call a market maker like ourselves who can make and advise on that position in the secondary's private equity market to get you liquidity. Can I give you one fun fact? Sure. The average age of a private equity fund, 16.2 years. Wow, that's crazy. It says 10 on the tin. It's 10 with two one-year extensions, so up to 12. But the average vehicle is around for 16.2 years. Hence the need for the secondaries market to provide liquidity for investors who want out. So just for the lay listener, I want to do a little definitional work here. So when we talk about a 10-year fund, you're putting money into a private equity fund.

32:13Over the course of that decade, they're making various investments. There's no guarantee in year 11 that all of those investments have found an exit. So there'll be a series of extensions. And even after those extensions, all right, the fund is arguably inactive, but we're trying to find an exit for this. A secondary market is one way that that can take place. It gets people who are in that liquid and hopefully at a discount for the buyers who come in and say, we'll take this at X price. We'll give them liquidity. And then it's year one for us, not year 12. So there are different timelines. Is that fair?

32:53You have explained it very, very beautifully. The only nuance I'd add to that is that that liquidity can be asked for by both the limited partner, so i.e. the investor in the fund itself, and we get asked by pension plans, endowments, foundations, family offices, saying, hey, we've held this portfolio now for eight years, nine years. It's getting long in the tooth. Or actually, my predecessor made these investments. I'm the new CIO. Can you sell this stuff for me? I don't like it anymore. or I've actually realized the gains I thought I would realize much sooner than I expected. Can you sell this on for me?

33:29All reasons to seek liquidity on the limited partner site. And we do that all day, every day. Actually, I've done 163 transactions in that space alone in the last decade. And we also organize the liquidity when the general partner asks us. Sometimes the general partner will say, actually, can you help organize liquidity for a company that needs to be sold out of the fund? Because the fund is reaching its end of life. The fund needs to sell some companies, but I, general partner, want to hold on to it longer. So pull it out of the fund and put it in its own fund. And that is called the continuation vehicle space.

34:01And that's something we do all day, every day as well. This is Scarlett Fu. And I'm Paul Sweeney, inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Every day, we harness the power of Bloomberg Intelligence to bring you deep dives into the companies that are moving markets, from publicly traded companies like Apple to those that are privately owned but known by everyone on earth like OpenAI. Now, I helped to build Bloomberg Intelligence to what it is today, Scarlett. And now our analysts are the best in the world, covering more than 2 ,000 global companies. That is your legacy, Paul.

34:30And we speak to those in-house experts every day. They are Bloomberg's go-to authorities on sectors, companies, and legal processes. And we do it all live each weekday then bring you the best conversations in our daily podcast. So be sure to search for Bloomberg Intelligence on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen. Listen in the afternoons on your way home from work to catch up on the market news you missed during the business day. That is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. I'm Scarlett Fu. And I'm Paul Sweeney. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts. We've been experiencing something here in the U.S.

35:03that I find kind of fascinating. And given your perch, I'm really curious as to what you see in the U.K. and Europe or the rest of the world. Over the past decade, there has been, for lack of a better word, a democratization of private equity and private debt. You used to need$20 or$10 million to participate in this. I think you get into a number of places for a quarter million,$100 ,000. Less, Barry, less. So this has, you know, when I look around at Blackstone and Carlyle and so many of the big PE firms in the U.S., they have set up parallel funds where, you know, there's really practically no minimum.

35:47Is this trend something that's U.S. focused? Are you seeing this in the U.K. and Europe? Tell us a little bit about private equity for everybody. Absolutely. the entrance of private wealth into private markets, but private equity in particular, has been the single biggest innovation and movement of capital from LP investors into private markets in the last five years. It's been happening, it started off over the last decade, but it's really over the last three to five years, we've seen an acceleration. And here's the most important fact, that as ultra high net worth and high net worth individuals build out their portfolios.

36:28They're putting equities, they're putting bonds, and they're putting alternatives and alternatives being led by private markets. The average investor in private wealth is under allocated to private equity by three to five X, three to 500%. That is a huge number. And so the growth of private wealth as an investor in private markets has absolutely exploded over the last two years and will continue to do so over the next decade or so. And it's a global phenomena. Of course, the U.S. led the way, and certainly the 40-act regulation of allowing semi-liquid evergreen products and individuals to invest on those was a huge game change when it came to private wealth's interest in alternatives.

37:14We're seeing the same thing in Europe. We're seeing the same thing in Asia, that individuals who have a certain net worth are saying, I want a bit of private equity in my portfolio. How do I go out to get it? And more and more sponsors are saying, well, I'm going to create solutions for you to access my funds and product and my alpha through accessible channels. So in the U.S., when this really began to get popular in the 2010s, one of the big drivers was zero interest rates. This is ZERP policy where when bonds are yielding, you know, two, two and a half percent, that side of the portfolio really wasn't producing anything.

37:55And people started looking around, hey, where can I get better yield? Private debt, private equity stepped into that and really filled that gap especially for institutional investors. So I look around the world and we had rates that were zero for a decade. How significant was that as a driver? And then what does it mean now that rates are appreciably higher than they were in the 2010s? There's no doubt that rates being low helped investors seek yield and seek alpha in different markets, including in private markets, but also it helped private equity do deals, right? Leverage buyouts requires leverage.

38:31And when rates were so low, the leverage was cheap and easily accessible, and they used it for that decade of boom that we had until rates started going up. Now that roads have gone up, but they are coming back down, we can always discuss what neutral looks like. What we have is now investors seeking, where do I invest that I can still find value in, given how expensive the public markets are, you think about the forward PE of the public markets today, where do I still get relative the value where I can buy at sensible multiples and sell at higher ones, private markets. So it's a diversification strategy.

39:09And secondly, it's an incredibly important way for investors to say that as I think about a balanced portfolio, I want to seek investments in folks who really know how to add value to businesses over a period of time. So they'll do that only in general partners who have a track record. And that track record is often anywhere between 15 % to 22%, 23 % net IRRs. And that track record really matters. So you have to be able to return money over the neutral rate. Otherwise, you're not going to be viable. Even the best private credit funds will return high single digits or low teens type of returns, which is very much a good diversifier and an addition to private wealth portfolios.

39:53And one of the things I noticed whenever I see a private debt or a private credit, it used to be LIBOR, now it's SOFRA. It's not a fixed rate. It's a variable rate plus some markup beyond that. So kind of raises the question, low interest rates for a cent people exploring this aspect of private markets and private credit and debt, do higher rates really have a negative impact or you're still getting whatever the SOFR rate is plus 5, 6, 7 percent? Yes, for sure you're going to get a, if you're comparing to SOFR, you're definitely going to get a return normalization, which did happen when rates were in 22, 23.

40:37Less deals got done because at higher rates, private equity funds had a difficult time borrowing. The debt markets were shut. So deal values came down. If you look at the M &A volumes at most of the major investment banks, including at Raymond James, volumes came down. Now they're on their way back up. But your point is a salient one. How does it impact returns? You have to be able to show, if you're doing private equity buyouts, you've got to be able to show that you can do 15 points over for Sofra, right? 15, that's a big number. 10 to 15 points. If you are a mid-market private equity house, you are returning 20 % net IRRs.

41:10That's kind of what you have to show fund on fund. And that's interesting. That's why you're added to a portfolio. If you're a private debt strategy, obviously not. Private debt will be more like low teens type of numbers, somewhere in the 10 % to 13 % net range. But even that is value add when you think about a debt strategy. Because even in public market debts, you're not able to find that type of yield. So as rates come down, as money gets pushed out of T-bills, gets pushed out of money market accounts and starts to seek yields again, private markets become interesting to a lot of players. Really, really interesting.

41:46You mentioned the transaction numbers slid down and then came back up again. Does that impact the secondaries you've done? You guys have done over 200 secondaries and fundraising transactions. That's a pretty big number for a relatively short period of time. How have you seen the volumes on secondaries affected by swinging interest rates? So there was a dip in the secondaries markets transacting volumes in 2023 in particular, as rates were high and investors didn't know what impact that had on valuation. If you remember the first half of 2023, the world froze because you had Fed raising interest rates and all other central banks.

42:28You had Ukraine, Russia, you had Silicon Valley Bank, and then you had Credit Suisse. So everybody was deer in headlines going, what on earth is going on? Volumes came down that year in secondaries market as well as in M &A. Now those volumes have gone up. This year, 2024, will be another high watermark for the secondaries market in terms of transacted volumes. and that's because as the private markets grow, the need for liquidity and a liquidity solution over the period of that 10 to 15 year hold becomes all the more pertinent for both limited partners and general partners. So now regardless of what the rates are doing, you have investors saying, you know what, every year or every two years, I'm gonna sell in the secondaries market and move that cash into other more opportunistic situations or back into a program that will yield me a higher return because I've made what I needed to make out of this portfolio.

43:20That's become programmatic amongst many institutional investors. So I love the word opportunistic. In the public markets, when we get those dislocations and people use the word freeze, in public markets we use the word panic because they have the liquidity to engage in bad behavior, it definitely creates opportunities. When you see in the private markets people pulling back and freezing, do you end up seeing the same sort of, hey, this is a substantial discount. I want to participate in this. You're absolutely right, Barry. It all comes down to the discount. And are there willing sellers at the price?

43:55There's always a price. I'll give you one anecdote. One fund interest we sold traded at 8.5 cents on the dollar. 8.5. Really? There was a seller who said, get me any price I want out. I don't want to hold this anymore. Wow. Okay? This was, I'm going back to 2013, 2014. But there was a buyer at 8.5 % of NAV, of net asset value. Great. You have all the cushion in the world. and you look like a genius when you do your markups the next quarter. Even in the worst of the financial crisis, bad mortgages, pools of bad mortgages, they were selling for$0.35,$0.40. Seemed like a huge deal. 92.5 % off, 91.5 % off.

44:35That's unbelievable. That was an Asian manager in 2013. But I would say the average discount these days, the best private equity fund managers do not trade at discounts. They trade at close to their net asset values. They trade close to par. But the average discount when it comes to the average buyout fund is somewhere in the 4 % to 8 % range for the average private equity buyout fund. If you hold venture, especially if it's got a lot of fintech in it these days, that's going at 30 % to 50 % discount because it's really hard to value that stuff. As you know, venture and growth is often valued at its last round's valuation.

45:10Well, if your last round was back in the boom years and all you've done is try to tread water and maybe raise some debt, you don't have a valid print. So we are seeing a lot more spread. A bid-ask spread is very wide in the venture and growth world right now. When it comes to buyouts, especially mid-market, large-cap buyout, at or close to par in the 90s. Huh, really interesting. So you mentioned deal flow has ticked up. I'm assuming that'll continue into next year. What are some of the challenges and headwinds that are out there that could be something an investor in this space should be aware of?

45:44I think the one that's most salient that we track most closely, Barry, is the fact that because the math broke at the investor level in end 22, early 23, we're still playing catch up on that. What does that even mean? It means that the exit activity, the M &A volumes, the ability to sell companies and return cash to institutional investors really slowed down from summer 22 onwards as we had inflation, as we had Ukraine, as we had some of the macro challenges. Plus a pretty public market at the same time. And a very ugly public market. So at that point, institutional investors stopped seeing very much cash back from their private equity portfolios.

46:24They were still having to pay into those capital calls that were being made by their private equity clients because the contributions still kept coming in saying, I want to do a new deal. I want to do an add-on. Here's some management fees and expenses you need to fund. But the cash back froze. Now, we're starting to come out of that now. But that math is still nowhere near where it needs to be. i.e. the private equity industry needs to return a lot more cash back to its investors. The capital markets need to open because some of the largest private equity funds you have out there need to list some of those businesses.

46:56And we haven't seen the IPO window open, U.S. or Europe, in the last year in a meaningful and sustainable way. We need all of that math to righten itself before institutional investors kind of come back to their normal levels of allocating to private equity. Where institutions have pulled back, private wealth has stepped in. We had that discussion. But the institutional investor has pulled back the average pension plan, the average endowment, the average foundation, the average insurance company. If they used to do$100 per fund investment last time around, this go around, there are 75 to 80 % of that only.

47:32So for them to come back to the$100, we need the private equity industry to sell companies and return cash back to them. It's getting better. 2024 is better M &A volumes than 2023 was, but is it back to what it was in 21? No, sir, we're not back there yet. You know, it kind of reminds me of what happened in the automobile market during the pandemic. When you're not making a lot of new cars, it means a few years later there are not a lot of used cars for sale. Sounds like it's the same situation where you have a 2022 slowdown. 2025, where are the exits? Am I oversimplifying that? I picked a really interesting analogy and I like it because that is what is happening.

48:13And now we're at the point where a lot of companies that were bought in the 2021 era need to be sold. And some of our clients have been prolific at returning that capital back. In fact, have done a great job in 2024 of exiting those businesses and returning cash back to investors. Others, not so much. Others need to pick up the speed on that. And as an industry, if you look at the entirety of the industry, let me give you some numbers. The average returns that investors get, cashback that they're used to expecting distributions as a percentage of the total value held in private equity is generally around 24%.

48:47In 23, that number dipped to only 11%. So far in 24, we're back to about 14%, but we're not back to 24. So when we're not talking about returns, we're talking about - Exit activity as a percentage of the net asset value. So 14 % exit as opposed to almost a quarter, big difference. Yes, historical average of 24%. The institutional investor does not like that math. They like to have their cash back, come back to normal levels, because that's the cash back to then recycle into new investments. They see other opportunities. So I asked you the negative question, what are the challenges? Let me flip it.

49:26What are the tailwinds? What are some of the positive things you see coming forward for the private market? I think that as you see the increase in regulation around public market listings, more and more companies around the world, U.S. and Europe and beyond, want to remain private. Because they see the benefits of being under private equity ownership, the value add, the access to resources, the ability to have capital at hand to grow faster is a very valuable playbook. So I expect that the private equity industry will continue to grow at the very rapid expansion rate that they've enjoyed. The other point I'll say is that this is a really interesting return driving environment for private equity.

50:11Valuations in the private markets remain very sensible. And there's a great arbitrage between U.S. and Europe. The U.S.-Europe divergence, as they're calling it these days, is real. So when it comes to saying, hey, I'm going to globalize my company's revenue chain, how do you do that? That's an interesting playbook, especially in the political environment we're in. And private equity is very well positioned to figure that out. The third thing we've already touched on, which is private wealth is a game change for private markets, is a game change in terms of the capital inflows that's coming in.

50:45And we're still at the early innings of that. It would change private equity for good. And I think it's very exciting to see that gather pace and to be at the forefront of that at Raymond James, which is one of the largest platforms, global private wealth platforms in the world. So let's talk a little bit about your time at Raymond James. First, you stand up your own firm, Siebel, and now you're at a Fortune 500 bank and advisory firm. That's got to be a culture shock. Tell us a little bit about what that transition was like. On paper, it is a culture shock. But during diligence, Raymond James approached me with an offer to acquire the business.

51:25And we spent months getting to know each other to ensure that the culture fit would work. Because if that didn't work, the key asset you were buying, which is talent in financial services, was going to walk. And so my boss now, who is the person who acquired Sabile, Jim Bunn, and I spent a lot of time getting to know each other and ensuring that him and I could work together well and effectively. and that the cultural alignment and entrepreneurial DNA would stay intact when they acquired the firm. Now I've been part of Raymond James three and a half years. I can safely say that the honeymoon's over, but also say that the culture fit has been a real hit.

52:04Raymond James has a very affable, community-oriented, very low ego type of culture in general. And I found the same thing in the capital markets business. And it's been actually one of my upside surprises of joining Raymond James on the cultural side. You wouldn't know it if you looked at the paper announcement that a Fortune 300 was buying a small boutique. And you go from small boutique to a trillion-dollar platform. How has that changed how you operate, not just globally, but the sort of companies you advise, the sort of funds that you're working with? What has been the upside for you being on this trillion-plus-dollar platform?

52:42There'd be two things I'd point to. The first is almost overnight, the largest private equity funds in the world started hiring us. Same team, same people, same services. All that changed was the logo of the boutique got replaced with the logo of a Fortune 300. Plus, Fortune 300 is a giant, you know, there's thousands and thousands of banks and funds. only a couple hundred companies attain that heft size. And it's not just the boutique, it's everything around it. You can tap into a giant network of experts. And one of my clients said, listen, no one gets fired for hiring a Fortune 300. Now you are part of one.

53:23And it changed our game overnight. Now overnight, we started signing 10, 20,$30 billion funds and that was incredibly exciting. So do what we love to do, but to do it for some of the biggest players in the markets. is very exciting. The second one is that we were able to figure out and avail of and offer the synergy with our private wealth partners at Raymond James very quickly. And for that, I'll always be thankful to the leadership of the firm because they saw the opportunity and they made that happen. And that's been a huge value add to our clients. I can imagine. All right. So I only have you for a handful of minutes left.

54:01Before I get to my favorite questions that I ask all my guest. I have a couple of curveballs I have to throw at you, starting with you're a certified sommelier from the Court of Masters Sommeliers. Tell us a little bit about your enthusiasm for wine and what led you into that. So I started teaching a wine class at Stanford for one unit of credit in my junior year. I was part of living in the French house there where I was a member of the staff and I had to teach a class that had something to do with France. I said, France and wine, that makes sense. Even though you were less than an hour from Napa Valley.

54:40And guess who my teachers were? I would get guest speakers and winemakers from Napa and Sonoma to come and my pitch to them was, hey, you get to talk to and teach wine to an impressionable young audience that can go on and become loyal customers. They loved it. They would come down and do a talk on wine and we'd do a small wine tasting. Maybe bring a couple of bottles, right? They sure did. It was voted Stanford's most popular class. It would often shut down the Stanford systems during sign-up day. And even after I graduated from Stanford, I kept teaching that wine class for close to three years after graduation.

55:19When I went to Harvard for my MBA, Harvard College, one of the houses there, residential houses there, asked me to come teach a wine seminar for them, which I did, which was, again a roaring success. And then I moved to London. And when I moved to London, I said, well, I'm not teaching anything here. I guess I'm going to lose all this wine knowledge. Let me put it to the test. And I decided to take the Court of Master Sommelier's test. It was a three-day test. I don't think I've crammed that hard for anything in my life. It had a blind tasting of 10 wines. It had a service test, had theory papers.

55:56It was incredibly intense. But lo and behold, I ended up passing. And here we are. It's a lifetime qualification. I still have it with pride and honor, although I don't use it as much anymore now being a mom of three. So I was going to ask, you're London-based. It's a short train ride to France, to Germany, to Italy. There are some great wines in that area. How often do you get to go to local wineries and sample the wares. I love tasting wine. And so I have joined a wine club in London, which I love. I used to take part in blind wine tasting competitions, less so now. So any opportunity I can to enjoy and experiment and try new wines, I do so.

56:41You're absolutely right. Europe is a bastion of winemaking. And so if I go to board meetings in Germany, or if I head off for a weekend in Spain. It's all about diving deep into the local wine. I recently went for dinner with about 10, 12 friends to a lovely restaurant near Barcelona in Spain. And there was a wine tasting pairing there for all Spanish wines. And we did that together and learned more about Spanish wines than we ever thought we would know. That's the kind of thing that I do now as a passion and hobby. Really, really interesting. All right. So I'm going to have you for a few more minutes.

57:17Let's jump to our favorite questions. Tell us what's keeping you entertained these days. What are you either watching or listening to? What are you streaming? Watching, I have to say, I tend to watch in limited doses these days, given life and travel and children. But I love The Diplomat on Netflix. Fascinating. Again, geopolitics. I'm absolutely interested in the new spy thriller that Paramount has out called The Agency. I've watched a couple of episodes. It's trending well so far. I love listening to a number of podcasts. My go-to list will be Andrew Humerman. He's a Stanford professor. Right, the healthcare.

58:02Yes, he loves it. He talks about health wellness protocols. Super fascinating. I try to dive into his stuff as much as I possibly can. They're long, though, so sometimes it takes a few iterations. I'll often listen to the news via podcasts, whether it's Bloomberg, CNBC. That's often part of my regular rota. And more than any of the others, I am a huge believer in preventative mental health. I meditate every day, go to an annual meditation course. So I'm often listening to talks around meditation, around mental health, how do you deepen your meditation practice. That's a huge part of my repository as well.

58:41And while we're on streaming entertainment, if you like The Diplomat and The Agency, let me suggest The Lioness on Paramount about intelligent agencies and how they infiltrate terrorist groups. Really fascinating. Very cool. I just finished the first season and I'm looking. You need a break because it's like very tense and wow, we're about to start the second season. Tell us about your mentors. Who helped shape your career? I am lucky enough to have been picked up by a wonderful professor at Stanford called Professor Tom Kosnick. Tom took me on at the tender age of 19 or 20 and took me under his wing, made me a research fellow.

59:28He's the one that enabled me to guest lecture at Stanford. I wrote case studies that are still used in the teaching curriculum there under him. And he's been a tremendous mentor and supporter very early on. and forever thankful to him for his coaching and mentorship over the years. Similarly is a wonderful professor at Stanford called Professor Tina Selig. She gave me one of the best pieces of advice I think any young career professional, but certainly a woman, could have received. She said to me, you can have it all, just not at once. And that has stuck with me forever since. And it's been true in many walks of life as I've had my children, as I've grown my businesses, as I do what I do on a daily basis.

1:00:10So those are the two that stand out, both at Stanford, both influential in the way they mentored me, but also what they imparted in me. Really interesting. Let's talk about books. What are some of your favorites and what are you reading right now? I love the book, The Big Leap by Gray Hendricks. Everyone should pick it up. It's a quick read. It talks about upper limits, how we set upper limits unconsciously in our lives. He starts off with this great research about how most lottery winners, after five years, most of them end up being broke or really unhappy. Broke, divorce, suicide. It's terrible.

1:00:50It's terrible. Why? We've just been coming to all these riches. the mind has a reset point that brings you down into what you're used to feeling and the kind of mental space you're used to inhabiting. How do you break out of that and increase your upper limits so you can continue to scale in your life and in your career and in your personal life and so on? Fascinating quick read, Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, highly recommended. I'm reading a book right now, I'm only about 30 pages into it called The Mind Matters, back to my thematic about mental and and understanding how the mind works and mental health.

1:01:25Mind Matters is by a professor who talks about how the mind can often visualize things into reality. So you hear this phrase called manifestation a lot. This is a neuroscientist studying what that means in terms of how the brain fires to try to make things into reality for us. Fascinating 35 pages or so, so far. So early innings, but it's going well. Really interesting. And our final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career in private markets or finance? My number one piece of advice to anybody entering finance is play the long game. Too many young people, I'm sure that you come across, Barry, that I come across, are all about the short-term hits and the short-term wins.

1:02:15If it doesn't work out, they move on and they try to make it work somewhere else and they move on again. A rolling stone gathers no moss. And especially in finance, it's a world that ends up being one, maybe two degrees of separation. It's a world in which relationships still really, really matter. And you have to cultivate them thinking about a 10, 20-year career in mind, not what can this person do for me today or this week or this month or immediately. And that is, I think, one of the most profound pieces of advice I leaned into early in my career, looking at every human being as a long-term investment of time and energy, not looking for quick paybacks.

1:02:53Same with investing in private equity, but certainly true when it comes to people. Really interesting. And our final question, what do you know about the world of private equity today you wish you knew 20 plus years ago when you were first starting out? What I know now that I wish I knew back then is that the market will change and adapt even faster and more furiously than you ever thought possible. Did we see the trillions of dollars in the private equity primary market? No. Did I see the secondaries market growing to$150 billion on its way to a trillion dollars itself? No. So the growth will far outpace your wildest dreams, both in your own industry, but also in the finance world around you.

1:03:41Think about 20 years ago. Had you and I ever envisioned the MAG-7 and the trends we're seeing in technology and how markets would be at the levels they are today? Not even in our wildest dreams. So as I think about the next 20 years, I keep that in mind. Really, really interesting. Thank you, Sinena, for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Sinena Sinha. She is the global head of the private capital advisory group for Raymond James. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure and check out any of the previous 540 we've done over the past 10 and a half years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, Bloomberg, YouTube, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

1:04:25And be sure and check out my new podcast, At The Money, short 10-minute conversations with experts about topics affecting your money, earning it, spending it, and most importantly, investing it. At The Money in the Masters in Business feed or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack team who helps us put these conversations together each week. John Wasserman is my audio engineer. Anna Luke is my producer. Sean Russo is my researcher. Sage Bauman is the head of podcasts here at Bloomberg. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

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