Inside qashqade: Thomas Mackell

In a series of interviews, we find out what makes the people at qashqade tick. In this article we sat down with Thomas Mackell, who heads up our business development in the US.

How did you get into financial services?

My career in finance began way before I started at Smith Barney Shearson in 1993. At a younger age I had formed 2 small companies, one a landscaping business at the age of 10 and the other at 20 years old, a resource network for musicians to find services they need but may not be skilled or proficient at.  

During my university study years, I joined a band that needed a lead guitar player and left college to tour the U.S for 3 months. Friends I had grown up with, who needed to replace their current guitarist. As fabulous as that was, it was the shock of living on a musicians’ existence on the road which became the motivation I needed to focus on my studies more diligently and finally finish college.  

After graduation I got a job as a Sales Associate at a major wire house, where I gravitated towards the interesting and quite misunderstood derivates markets. After getting licensed, I learned all I could about the markets and how they traded, i.e. equity, credit, commodities, indexes, options, futures, charting etc. and the correlation to each other (or lack of).  

I then moved to a global OTC equity derivatives brokerage a week after the collapse of Barings Brothers in the wake of the “rogue trader” scandal in 1994. Working on the desk was chaotic and busy from day one. I was hooked! The learning curve was a steep one, but I welcomed the challenge. After learning all I could and looking for upward career mobility I set out to help head the equity trading desk at another big global inter dealer broker, and helped build it into a much larger desk by the time I moved on about two years later. My next role was with one of my trading clients, a Latin American financial institution, where I began as a sales trader and eventually ran the equity trading desk in New York.  

Well as the age 30 was growing closer I decided to get off the trading desk and move towards the pension fund marketplace. Where my father was in since the late 1960’s. I grew up with my father as the fund administrator and Fund Chairman for one of the maritime union pension plans before he moved to the world of investment management. I was familiar with the labor and management set up, a board of trustees, the world of collective bargaining and pension liabilities, actuarial assumptions, and asset allocation. These were words we learned growing up. Well, out of the two other siblings I have, I listened to our father talk of these subjects.  

I spent a year in the investment consulting business, specializing in soft dollar sales and commission recapture programs (CRP) before being recruited by Lynch, Jones & Ryan, a pioneer in the business of CRP. This service unbundled the research component from institutional equity and fixed income execution and rebated a portion of the commissions or spread generated back to the pension plans. This introduced me to the concept of fiduciary responsibility as it pertains to running a pension fund.  

From there my business grew tremendously as I concentrated on one marketplace, the multi-employer or Taft-Hartley pension funds. From there as my career grew, I branched out to other marketplaces, public funds, corporate, endowments & foundations and other pockets of institutional capital.  

Out of the CRP business, the transition management business was developing and gaining popularity in the institutional space. We took advantage of that and built out a team. I have a fond memory of my experiences and those that I worked and learned from, many of whom I am still in touch with today. One thing I have learned is… You're never too old to learn more and we constantly are if we stay open to it and have the hunger for it.  

What are the big themes that you’re discussing with clients and prospects currently?

There is an SEC Ruling (Release No. IA-5955) stipulating (among other things) that all RIAs will need to provide investors with quarterly statements detailing information about private fund performance, fees, and expenses. Being able to accurately report on fund performance, fees and distribution to LPs is therefore becoming critical. I still speak to companies who are relying on manual spreadsheets, and they have concerns with bad data, incorrect calculations, human error and inadvertently providing investors with poor quality reports.  

What are your thoughts on the need to automate waterfall calculations?

As for the product: digitizing the protocol for complex waterfall carry calculations is a very important task and one that must be done prior to any regulation that may be coming down the road. Be it in Europe, the United States, EMEA, or Asia Pacific it is coming as alternative market products gain more popularity among the investor base in several categories of investor. As more and more capital comes in, the need for an audit trail is necessary and required to keep the playing field honest and trustworthy.  

As with any game, having a set of rules and following them makes the whole experience best for all players.