5-in-1 Alternative Assets Masterclass

THE ULTIMATE MASTERCLASS

This masterclass contains five courses that I have released, over time, in terms of alternative assets:

• Fundamentals of Private Equity
• Fundamentals of Private Debt
• Fundamentals of Hedge Funds
• How Manipulation Works in Asset Management
• Executive Presence in Institutional Fundraising and Sales

The goal of this course is to give you an overview of these three major Alternative Investment types, as well as the social skills that complement the technical knowledge.

This is a course targeted for the “ultimate” alternative investments professional, who wants to both master the most-known asset classes and all of their areas, but also wants the additional soft skills in order to succeed.

LET ME TELL YOU… EVERYTHING

Some people – including me – love to know what they’re getting in a package.

And by this, I mean, EVERYTHING that is in the package.

So, here is a list of everything that this course covers:

Fundamentals of Private Equity

• How the Private Equity industry positions itself vis-a-vis other such as Venture Capital (which it includes), Hedge Funds and Investment Banking;
• What are the types of activities with a PE fund throughout the stages of sourcing, investing in and monitoring opportunities;
• How PE funds actually work, from fundraising from allocators to deploying capital, as well as how operations are financed, and the provisions negotiated with investors;
• The two main value drivers in PE investments (namely LBOs or leveraged buy-outs), which are financial engineering and value creation, and which each consists of;
• How PE-owned companies, namely leveraged buy-out companies behave differently from public ones, in terms of their strategic focus (quarterly shareholder value focus versus “full potential”), how the business is restructured and OPEX (operational expenditures) minimised, as well as how talent is incentivized for performance;
• The usual approaches to valuation (both two multiples-based approaches – trading comparables and transaction comparables, as well as the DCF – or Discounted Cash Flows – methods), as well as when each of these make sense;
• How to perform a trading comparables analysis, researching a company and its key value drivers, defining the universe of comparable companies, corroborating that information, spreading their key financials, and finally determining their multiples, and a valuation range for the target company;
• How to perform a transaction comparables analysis, finding transactions on companies similar to the target one, corroborating these with financial/deal information, de-biasing the price for premiums paid and/or synergies, spreading the key transaction information, determining their multiples and a valuation range for the target company;
• How the DCF, of Discounted Cash Flows method works, by calculating the FCF or Free Cash Flow of the company for a stabilization period, with the goal of calculating its TV or Terminal Value. Then, normalizing that TV based on the capital structure of the company (debt/equity), using the WACC or Weighted Average Cost of Capital, and finally, using a discount factor to discount those cash flows based on the present value of money;
• How the Venture Capital asset type works, using a “spray-and-pray” model for startups focused on exponential growth (J-Curve growth or “hockey stick” growth), as well as the relationship between the board member (usually a fund GP) and the startup founding team, which is frequently demoted or replaced with growth;
• How Growth Capital or Growth Equity works – investing in companies that are at the intersection of late-stage VC and early-stage “traditional” Private Equity, consisting of minority stake investments in companies that just need small cash injections – low-risk and low-reward;
• How Leveraged Buy-Outs work, from determining the attractiveness of an investment (robust cash flow, large asset base, operational “fat that can be trimmed”), as well as how operations are run (restructurings and divestitures to achieve “full potential” within 4-5 years, with a set of 4-5 key initiatives, and talent incentives for performance, either with actual equity or “phantom equity”, as well as the monthly focus on OPEX reduction to pay off debt interest);
• How Special Situations investments work, both Distressed Debt and Turnaround Capital, focusing on helping ailing companies and profiting from their recovery, and why regulatory/legal issues prevent “mainstream” expansion of these investments;
• The institutional fundraising process, from fund marketing, to information providing in data rooms, to due diligence and allocation;
• The context of fund marketing, including myths such as that keeping funds hidden will not attract regulator attention or will make the fund manager have “mystique” and exclusiveness, to actual regulatory roadblocks to fund marketing;
• The usual fund marketing channels and materials, from simplified versions of fund offering documents, interviews/features with the fund management team and CEOs, periodic updates and others;
• How to actually sell a fund to an allocator using the PPP model (performance, processes and persuasion). Focusing on performance, on the sophistication of processes (ideally, institutional-quality), but also leveraging my unique persuasion tools to better convince investors;
• What type of standard and bespoke provisions investors usually request, from changes in fees (management fees, performance fees, co-investment fees, many others), to complex clauses related to investment restrictions, secondaries sales, transparency requirements, fund financing restrictions, GP commit and devotion, GP removal rights, among others;
• How to negotiate provisions with allocators, from strategic tactics such as reducing allocation size or breaking up syndicated groups of investors, to “in-the-room” tactics such as Implementation Intention or empathy to disarm the other side and make them more receptive;
• The role of the key players in a fund, from associates, to VPs and principals, to GPs, as well as the tasks that each performs in a fund;
• The tasks at different stages of a fund’s lifetime, from sourcing opportunities (first round of vetting, meeting with intermediaries, initial risk/reward projections, indicative offers) to investing (complete due diligence, deal modeling and financing, deal consideration, negotiations), to post-investment monitoring (preparing exits, supporting companies as a board member) to fund-end activities (fund extensions, fund restructurings, rushed sales including possible sponsor-to-sponsor transactions, and more);
• Stage-independent activities in a fund that are always necessary, including reporting (internal and external), or helping with possible LP secondaries sales;

Fundamentals of Private Debt

• What are the essential terms and keywords in terms of debt. Maturity, principal, interest. What is direct lending, what is leveraged lending. What is secured debt, what is collateral, what is overcollateralization, what do debt liens mean, what is bilateral and syndicated lending, what is a credit facility, what does debt seniority or debt instruments being “investment-grade” mean, what is the yield or interest rate, what is securitized debt (structured finance products), what is debt rediscounting, what are covenants, and what are primary and secondary transactions in funds;
• What are the different payment modalities for both the principal and the interest of debt. Principal: Amortised, bullet, sinking fund, call and put provisions. Interest: Cash, PIK (paid-in-kind), step-up, zero-coupon, deferred interest, periodic reset;
• What are the different debt characteristics. Public or private, used to finance operations or a transaction, short- or long-term, with instruments above or below investment grade, secured or not, with a fixed or a floating interest rate, being a term loan or a revolving line of credit, being committed or uncommitted, and being provided by banks, private lenders or the bond market;
• Similarities and differences between Private Equity and Private Debt, including similarities in fund structures and allocator profiles (closed-end funds), but with different return models (exits in PE versus fixed income in PD), as well as the differences between debt and equity underwriting (structuring debt tranches vs. structuring share price and quantity), and the intersection between both (financing LBOs with private debt, for example);
• The two main types of private debt vehicles: BDCs (Business Development Companies) and private credit funds, as well as the major differences between them (types of investors allowed + investment strategy bias);
• What types of debt instruments are provided by banks, including overdraft facilities, term loans, money market facilities, revolving lines of credit, and leases;
• What types of DCM (debt capital markets) debt instruments exist, including commercial paper, or bonds and notes, including corporate bonds and high-yield bonds, with different levels of risk and yield;
• The different types of investment strategies, from middle-market corporate lending, to real estate, infrastructure debt, and many others;
• How middle-market corporate loans work, usually provided either by senior, secured bank debt or private mezzanine debt, with different levels of risk and demands (maintenance financial covenants);
• How mezzanine debt works, originally an intermediate step between equity rounds and bank debt, but nowadays reduced to a specific niche, either for bespoke financing needs, or as a replacement for high-yield bonds at times of instability;
• How Asset-Based Lending (ABL) works, with collateral being specific assets of the borrower, frequently used for working capital needs, using either inventory or Accounts Receivable (A/R) as collateral, and usually repaid by the liquidation of the collateral assets;
• How real estate debt works, for the development or maintenance of properties of different types (residential or commercial, including all categories of property, from offices to retail, industrial, hospitality and other types), and, specifically for senior, secured real estate debt, its presence as core in many portfolios, as a tested, reliable strategy;
• How infrastructure debt works, mainly for energy and transportation purposes (power plants, oil pipelines, airports, roads and more), and mostly senior, secured debt where a government is a borrower. Lower risk and lower reward, usually used as a risk dampener;
• How structured finance products work, including CLO (Collateralized Loan Obligations), CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations) or MBSs (Mortgage-Backed Securities), how the securitization process works, and their role in the 2008 subprime crisis;
• How distressed debt works, mainly DIP (Debtor-In-Possession) debt, where lenders intervene during a critical liquidity crisis of the borrower, helping them prevent bankruptcy and profiting from their recovery;
• How venture debt works, as a type of Venture Capital (VC) but with debt instead of equity. Ideal for when the startup doesn’t want to give up more equity, or just can’t due to circumstances (down rounds), with high barriers to entry in terms of specialized knowledge and contacts;
• How royalties work in terms of debt investing, licensing the rights to IP (Intellectual Property), namely in sectors such as life sciences/big pharma, entertainment such as movies and music, or consumer brands such as makeup and consumer electronics, and the high barriers to entry in terms of knowledge and contacts;
• How consumer lending, marketplace lending and P2P lending work, an industry evolving at a quick pace, and how private lenders can obtain exposure to this strategy, usually through rediscount lending through marketplaces or platforms;
• An overall view of loan agreements, including specific sections such as conditions precedents, representation and warranties, the definitions used, and covenants;
• The different types of covenants – affirmative, negative and financial – as well as the two main types of financial covenants: incurrence and maintenance, as well as their consequences;

Fundamentals of Hedge Funds

• What makes a hedge fund, including being a class of alternative asset, being open-end instead of closed-end, charging a performance fee/incentive fee, and using exclusive techniques such as short selling, leverage or derivatives (like options, futures or ETFs);
• Myths surrounding hedge funds, related to their secrecy, whether they hedge positions or not, their use of leverage, and their obscene returns;
• Comparing hedge funds with mutual funds, in terms of structure, presence or absence of a performance fee, liquidity, and others;
• Comparing hedge funds and other classes of alternative assets, in terms of structure, being open-end or closed-end funds, as well as expected allocator liquidity;
• An overview of the key players in a fund, both internal and external;
• The investment team, composed of traders, PMs, and analysts, and how they perform different tasks including idea generation, generating an investment thesis from an idea, and actually putting capital to work;
• The fundraising and Investor Relations team, including activities such as fund marketing and selling a fund, negotiating provisions and agreements, and dealing with nervous or angry allocators that may want to redeem their capital;
• The fund executives – usually CIO (Chief Investment Officer) or COO (Chief Operational Officer), that may be fund partners (usually GPs), or external, and what they focus on;
• What prime brokerages (a.k.a. prime brokers or “primes”) perform, in terms of bridging hedge funds and financial marketings, including performing, clearing and settling trades, but also other services such as extending leverage or performing capital introductions;
• Fund administrators and their functions, running operations and calculating performance metrics, among others, and fund custodians, taking custody of the assets – both for added investor protection;
• Fund lawyers, which are usually essential to establish the fund’s legal entities and negotiate provisions with investors – both in a standardised LPA (Limited Partnership Agreement) but also custom provisions in side letters, as well as fund accountants, which usually perform spend analysis and investment analysis, creating third-party audited performance records, which are essential to investors;
• An overview of the four main hedge fund strategies – equity, event-driven, macro and relative value/arbitrage;
• Equity plays and how they work through the directional movement of equity prices, including quantitative approaches, long or short plays, and based on fundamental growth or fundamental value, in possible sectors or geographies;
• The possible net market exposures of equity funds, which can be “net long”, market neutral or “net short”;
• Event-driven plays, relying on either anticipating or causing a major change in a company’s lifetime;
• How activist investing works, by owning a small share of a company and then presenting a plan for change to the board of shareholders;
• How merger arbitrage works, by owning shares in two companies before a merger;
• How private issue and Regulation D investments work, by owning private securities of a company that are usually less expensive than the public securities;
• How distressed debt works, by investing in ailing companies and profiting from their recovery;
• How macro plays work, by consolidating global tendencies in specific trades, usually in commodities or currencies;
• How both systematic and discretionary macro plays are performed, including managed futures accounts, CTAs, or other formats;
• How carry trades work, by performing yield arbitrage on a currency pair in order to obtain daily interest besides profiting from the price convergence;
• How relative value (or arbitrage) plays work, by exploiting price discrepancies either for one single security, or in a pair of securities (where one is underpriced, and the other one is overpriced);
• Other forms of hedge fund strategies, including multistrategy funds, which combine multiple strategies, which dilute both excess returns and losses, and Funds of Funds (FoFs), which have higher overhead, but can present investors with diversification and access to exclusive, high-performing managers;
• Some measures of return calculations in a fund, including the nominal return, the annualized return (returns standardised for a yearly period), and compounding return, with different compounding rates;
• Measures of returns adjusted for risk, including alpha, the Sharpe Ratio, the Sortino Ratio and the Treynor Ratio (which use different variations of risk, including standard deviation, downside deviation, or the market beta or undiversified risk);
• Sources of risk in hedge funds, including the three main layers (market risk, secondary risk and idiosyncratic risk);
• The six main types of market risks (equities, credit rates, interest rates, commodities, currencies, real estate);
• Sources of risk unique to hedge funds including leverage, liquidity, position concentration, client concentration, counterparties, and more;
• How leverage works (both borrowing leverage and notional leverage), as well as how to calculate levered risk;
• How liquidity risk occurs, both by trading illiquid securities, but also by holding large positions (even in liquid instruments);
• Some metrics and indicators for risk in hedge funds, including the famous (infamous?) VaR – Value at Risk, as well as its shortcomings, including lack of estimation outside the confidence level. Other measures of risk including standard deviation, downside deviation, largest loss and largest losing month, months to earn back losses or ratio of winning to losing months;

How Manipulation Works in Asset Management

• How asset managers can manipulate someone’s consistency, such as making traders agree to specific investment approaches or allocators agree to the merits of the fund in order to “lock them” into future action;
• How asset managers can leverage emotional manipulation, by getting allocators to feel attached to funds they invest in, or by causing fear or anticipation in their investment team so they perform better;
• How asset managers can leverage effort manipulation, making allocating or switching investment strategies seem like less effortful, which makes it more easy to do;
• How asset managers can leverage standard manipulation, twisting comparisons between different investment funds or between traders in their team, using different criteria or making the exceptions they want;
• How asset managers can leverage pressure manipulation, by pressuring either investors to allocate or members of their investment team to make a change (or take other action), through scarcity or fear, for example;
• How asset managers can leverage identification manipulation, seeming to have traits in common with their investors to secure allocations, or seeming to have had similar experiences to their traders in order to get them to do something, being more influenceable;
• How asset managers can leverage fact manipulation, twisting the facts related to their investment fund, or the performance of specific members;
• How asset managers can leverage context manipulation, selecting what to compare their fund to in order to make it seem the best possible, as well as changing the effect it causes on investors;
• How asset managers can leverage labeling manipulation, using positive labels to seem more reliable and diligent, or using negative labels to discredit their “competition” in terms of investment;

Executive Presence for Institutional Fundraising and Sales

• What are the nine key pillars of executive presence, and the importance of each;
• How to cultivate initiative. Why doing more, both in terms of actively presenting information, but also reacting to crises and difficult investment situations makes you more present;
• How to cultivate your appearance. The image presented, the credentials you and the fund team, as well as associations with reputable investors or other institutions;
• How to cultivate salience and vision. How to be a fund manager that stands out from others, having unique investment angles, strategies, opportunities, and a strong vision that is reflected in the investment philosophy;
• How to cultivate transparency. Why sharing both the good and bad components of performance, risks, credentials and more elements is recommended – and required – to close significant allocations;
• How to cultivate harmony. Why being streamlined in your communication and subcommunication – inside and outside – allows for succint and clear presentations, and why investors consider the quality of the presentation a proxy for the quality of the actual fund;
• How to cultivate grace under fire. Not reacting in the face of tough demands and tough negotiations, passing on a strong image of stability that allocators appreciate;
• How to cultivate rigidity. Why illustrating that you are selective about people, processes, investments and even investors makes you more present and memorable;
• How to cultivate intellectual honesty. Why sharing the truth – whether it’s convenient for you or not – communicates an image of a trusted advisor, an objective manager that is crucial for allocators;
• How to cultivate tension and selectiveness. Why succint, clear communication is crucial for presentations, and why not immediately giving in to demands, but instead politely persisting makes you more respected and not less;

MY INVITATION TO YOU

Remember that you always have a 30-day money-back guarantee, so there is no risk for you.

Also, I suggest you make use of the free preview videos to make sure the course really is a fit. I don’t want you to waste your money.

If you think this course is a fit and can take your knowledge of how to protect yourself from manipulation to the next level… it would be a pleasure to have you as a student.

See on the other side!