Bank Investing

CHAPTER 10Conversations

“I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I do not believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody is that smart.”

– Charlie Munger

ALWAYS BE LEARNING

We believe that reading and continually learning from others is important to hone investing skill. Learning from a book is essential for the basics, but to improve one's craft it is important to be immersed in continuous conversations with management teams, investors, analysts, and all market and industry participants. One of the authors, Suhail Chandy, meets with over 150 bank management teams a year (in addition to fintech, real estate, financials and technology management teams) and has benefited immensely from the cross pollination of ideas, thoughts and learnings. The following thirteen conversations are with a diverse set of accomplished industry leaders and investors. These conversations reflect the thinking as of a certain point in time. The experience set of these individuals includes:

• Founders: Five founders who between them have founded three banks and four investment management firms.
• C-Suite: Five public company C-Suite members including one fintech CEO, two bank CEOs, one chairman, and one vice chairman.
• Investors: Seven investors, including the deputy CIO of a $150B AUM firm, a bank investor from a trillion-dollar AUM firm, a founder of a $3B AUM investment firm focused on complete capital structure analysis, ...