(Bloomberg) — Bank of Montreal asset management chief Kristi Mitchem said embracing hybrid work won’t be as easy as some business leaders assume.
After a period of entirely remote work during the pandemic, adjusting to a model where employees are in the office part time will involve trial and error, Mitchem said Tuesday at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California.
“The hard question is how to hybrid, so when you begin to think about some people being in and some people being out, it raises all of these questions,” said Mitchem, the chief executive officer of BMO Global Asset Management. “I don’t think we’ll get it right the first time. I think it’s going to be an experimentation process.”
Carlyle Executive Talks Up Private Credit Boom (12:45 p.m. NY)
Lower rates, a hunt for yield and more companies going private and staying that way for longer have all contributed to the huge growth in private credit markets, said Mark Jenkins, the global head of credit at Carlyle Group.
Private credit has increased from roughly $300 billion to more than $1 trillion over the past decade or so, partly fueled by banks retreating from lending, he said. While valuations have risen across the board in all asset classes, especially in equity markets, it’s not a particular worry for lenders.
“That’s a good thing for us from a credit perspective because it gives us a bigger margin of safety for the lending that we’re doing,” he said during a Bloomberg Television interview at the conference.
Oaktree’s Marks Says Son Lectured Him on Bitcoin (12:24 p.m. NY)
Oaktree Capital Management co-founder Howard Marks said his son Andrew, who lived with him during the pandemic lockdown, lectured him daily on dismissing Bitcoin without knowing enough.
“And he was right,” Marks said.
Marks famously criticized Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in a 2017 memo. “Nobody has been able to make sense to me of these currencies,” he wrote at the time. “They’re not real!!!!!”
In a memo earlier this year, though, the investor’s tone had shifted. The earlier skepticism “has been a source of much discussion for me and Andrew, who is quite positive on Bitcoin and several others and thankfully owns a meaningful amount for our family.”
Distressed Investor Marks Says ‘Nothing Is Distressed’ (11:47 a.m. NY)
There are fewer assets that satisfy the criteria for distressed investing, which include being under-appreciated, unknown or not understood, said Oaktree’s Marks.
“Strictly speaking, nothing is distressed,” he said, adding that excesses in valuations and availability of cash have made investing unusual for more than a year. “It’s tough at the time.”
He was asked how to determine value during a pandemic. “It’s hard to operate in a world where things are worth infinity,” Marks said of assessing companies when they’re growing faster than the discount rate. “It makes it hard on a value investor.”
Minerd Likens Crypto ‘Garbage’ to Dot-Com Bubble (11:07 a.m. NY)
The majority of cryptocurrencies are worthless and will fail, with just a handful of big winners remaining, Guggenheim Partners Chief Investment Officer Scott Minerd said.
Similar to the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, the world of digital currencies will produce some breakout successes like Amazon.com Inc., which went public in 1997, while most of the field will fade away, as Pets.com did, he said.
“Seventy percent of the coins are garbage and will go away,” Minerd said in a Bloomberg Television interview at the event.
Wood, Mnuchin Rank Among Day Two Highlights (10:30 a.m. NY)
The hybrid in-person and virtual conference resumed Tuesday with another busy session. Sandwiched between an early workout at a West Hollywood gym and an afternoon sound-bath meditation, there’s the usual big names on the agenda.
For finance pros, highlights include Ark Investment Management’s Cathie Wood and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appearing at 2 p.m. Beverly Hills time (5 p.m. New York).
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