Podcasts

[podcast] Where Blue Elephant’s Brian Weinstein is finding opportunity investing in marketplace lending

Zack Miller | December 18, 2015

Brian Weinstein of Blue Elephant Capital — Blue Elephant Capital’s Brian Weinstein

What would it take to get a managing director, managing a hundred billion dollars of fixed income assets at BlackRock, to jump ship to a start up asset manager? That’s the question I posed to Brian Weinstein, Chief Investment Officer of Blue Elephant Capital Management. His firm is a quickly growing investor in the peer to peer and direct lending space.

In Brian’s investment universe, the world is starved for yield and addicted to liquidity. When looking for his next investment, Brian and his firm pore through loan portfolios that are accompanied by lots of data to stress test performance assumptions. In his world, banks really ARE good at lending, so he’s looking at spaces where the banks aren’t participating as much in a pursuit for returns.

Brian joins me to discuss how peer to peer investors like him find opportunities by filling in some of the voids left behind by banks. We’ll hear what types of peer and direct lending he’s looking to invest in and what spaces he’s avoiding. We’ll also talk about boat finance. Yes, I said it, boat finance.

Listen to the FULL episode

What you’ll hear on this podcast:

Brian’s story of how he got to Blue Elephant: Why Brian left his PM role at BlackRock, managing $100B, to pursue investing in the burgeoning field of marketplace and direct lending
The type of research Brian and Blue Elephant conduct to determine the investability in loan portfolios coming out of marketplace and direct lenders
What spaces in direct lending Blue Elephant is looking at and which investments it’s staying away from
Why Blue Elephant likes the boat finance industry
Brian’s view on what banks are really good at and where they aren’t (or don’t participate)
Whether institutional investors should take equity positions in the marketplaces they participate in

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