The View from the Office.

I met up with David Hughes, who runs investor relations, marketing and strategic development at Mill Hill Capital, at Lady M near Bryant Park. He had the chocolate cake; I had the signature Mille Crepes.

David moved to New York eight months ago after spending a large portion of his career in Los Angeles working at the Getty Trust. We were introduced by Michael Billings.

At Getty he was an allocator, which means he helped select the managers who handled the Trust’s $9 billion in investments.

Being an allocator is a pretty awesome job because everyone on the sell side knows your name and your kids’ names and wants to take you to lunch. The tough part is making the hard calls on which managers to pick. 

David said it’s been easy to get excited about Mill Hill because he allocated Getty money to the firm for years. Mill Hill is a hedge fund focused on asymmetrical strategies across securitized and corporate bond markets that was founded by David Meneret. 

You get to meet some remarkable people working in finance. During his MBA at the University of California, Berkeley, David was the teaching assistant for Janet Yellen That was after she had been appointed to the Fed by Clinton but still more than a decade before she became Fed Chair. 

Among the hundreds of investment managers David has hired over his career, at Getty, he invested with the legendary money manager Michael Burry (made famous in the film The Big Short.) 

David said actor Christian Bale accurately portrayed Burry in the film. The part of the movie where Burry is shown listening to hard rock is accurate, though it was usually in the dark, Hughes said. 

We talked about how much finance has changed in the past two decades including the rise of private credit and alternative data and the explosion of venture and private equity. 

In spite of the growth in complexity of products, David stressed that wealth management remains heavily a relationship-driven business. Getting out and meeting people is crucial. 

Fortunately, that’s a part of the job David loves.  

You can connect with David via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.