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Be better than yesterday,
but not as good as tomorrow
W
e all have aspirations to be the best. Whether it’s at a company level, in our own
careers, or when it comes to personal goals, we’re all striving to be better and
grow with each passing day.
To achieve this progression, change is almost always needed. You can pick from a
number of famous quotes to illustrate this idea, but this one seems to put it best: “If you
always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got,” allegedly
from Albert Einstein, Henry Ford or Mark Twain “opinions seem to vary”.
The message is clear though: if you keep doing the same thing over and over again,
you are unlikely to achieve different results.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting
different results,” this one was definitely Einstein’s.
In this hedge fund issue, we have a plethora of stories about service providers
changing their approach in order to grow and prosper. These range from new business
models (page 46) and M&A deals (page 50), to responding to new investment trends
such as ESG (page 42), private equity or even cryptocurrency (page 20).
Across the prime brokerage and fund administration industry, service providers
are recognising that the industry remains in a period of change, and are responding
accordingly.
Some are employing bold tactics or new products. Perhaps T.S. Elliot’s sentiment that
“only those who go too far, can truly know how far one can go” is applicable here.
Elliot’s mantra also rings true for prime brokers challenging the hold of the two banks
which have dominated the scene for years. Now, a new dynamic within the equities
franchise, c