Gillian Tett

So can you just unpack what it means to be a fixed income arbitrage in the early 19th century?

Well, at least he got a painting of King's College out of it all, I guess.

I mean, we have quite a famous watercolor of that as well.

And while we're talking about King's College, there is someone else we have to talk about as well, which is John Menne Canes, who was the father of much of the modern macroeconomic analysis that shapes us today.

but also he managed the endowment at King's College, Cambridge, and he was what we call the bursar, the chief treasurer.

How did he do, given that he's so well known for his brilliant economic insights?

But there's two things that I, as I understand it from college law, and I should say, I actually have this portrait hanging up on my wall.

It's actually of John Mennecane's because he dominates King's College.

And we have his letters and diaries in the archives here.

But there are two caveats.

Firstly, as I understand it, he kind of blew up a bit in the 1920s.

And so the fact he outperformed later was partly as a result of having messed up the 1920s and learned the right lessons.

And then secondly, he had a huge aversion to real estate and got the college out of some of its real estate, which at the time most of the other colleges in Oxford and Cambridge were still invested in.

Which looked kind of good for a while, but if you fast forward 100 years, some colleges like Trinity, just near King's College, hung on to their real estate portfolio and are actually a lot richer than any other college today as a result.

Is that right?

What I find fascinating, though, is that he went from being basically a day trader to being a very long term, patient investor in just a few stocks, which he analyzed bottom up, if you like.

And, you know, I am now overseeing a committee that looks at the endowment of King's College a century later.

It's quite hard for any big institution today to actually copy that style because the pressure from almost everybody advising you is to go into exchange rated funds and try and mimic the market.

And that's quite a shift, isn't it, Toby?

In some senses, we should say a big thank you to John Miller Keynes here at King's College, because at least he did create an endowment.