PSG are the Champions of Europe

PSG makes history by winning the Champions League final by a record 5-0 margin against Inter Milan. Congratulations Paris, congratulations Qatar!

And the Winner Is…

There were some great goals in the 2024/2025 Premier League season. Here were 10 contenders for the best:

And the winner is…Omar Marmoush’s 30-yard sizzler!

I Heart New York

New York City, "the City," is an amazing place with its iconic skyline, diverse population, and bustling streets filled with ‘organized chaos’. Some people never want set foot anywhere else ("...culture, food, the Park. Why leave?") Not surprisingly, New Yorkers can be a little self-absorbed, as famously depicted by Saul Steinberg's classic 1976 New Yorker cover. 

But 500 years ago? Who could've imagined a small Dutch outpost would become one of the world's most important cities? Well, the guys at SNL believe it was obvious from the start in this delightful clip, including a mention of NYC's most famous street: Broadway.

Tale as Old as Time...True as it Can Be

Indeed!

Those are the opening lines to the theme song for Disney's classic animated Beauty and Beast (1991) movie, and later, the 2017 live action version. The movies are based on the 1749 French fairy tale by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Fascinatingly, De Villeneuve drew her inspiration from historical events. The real "beast" was a man named Petrus Gonsalvus who born in Tenerife, Spain in 1537. Gonsalvus had a rare genetic condition called hypertrichosis or "werewolf syndrome." It is characterized by excessive hair growth throughout the body, including the face. At a young age Gonsalvus was sent to Henry II of France in a cage as a curiosity. The King however appreciated boy's quiet and calm nature and sought to transform him into a gentleman. 

Gonsalvus became a part of the royal court and would go on to speak, read, and write, in three languages. While his achievements impressed many he was still viewed by most as somewhat less than human. After Henry's death Gonsalvus became the property of the King's widow and de facto ruler, Catherine de' Medici. Catherine sought her own experiment on Gonsalvus, involving "Belle." She wanted to see would happen if her "beast" married a beautiful woman; what kinds of children would they conceive? She found a wife for Gonsalvus, a young maiden also named Catherine, who was the daughter of a royal court servant.

Petrus Gonsalvus met Catherine for the first time on their wedding day. The pair would be married for 40 years and have seven children, four of whom suffered from Gonsalvus' condition, which has dominant traits. Sadly, the four hypertrichosis-stricken children were sent as gifts to other European courts. As a result, the story of the "beauty and the beast" was thus spread across the continent, eventually becoming part of de Villeneuve's tale. 

The Racket: Finance Bros Edition

A couple of funny memes re-making the rounds on LinkedIn this morning...

Private Equity:

Hedge Funds:

Broadcast Yourself…

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the first video on YouTube, the world’s biggest social media platform. Originally intended to be a dating tool with videos (obviously?), YouTube quickly revolutionized how we watch, create, and share videos, turning ordinary users into content creators. The NYT has a great article chronicling its biggest moments from Lazy Sunday to Gangnam Style to I am Not a Cat., etc.

Google saw the potential of YouTube early on and snapped it up in 2006 for $1.65 billion, the company's biggest acquisition at the time. Today, YouTube has 2.53 billion active monthly users (behind only Facebook), and more than 60% of all U.S. internet user access the site daily. In 2024, the site generated $54+ billion in revenue and is on track to overtake Disney as the world's biggest media company by revenue in 2025. In fact, analysts estimate that YouTube could be worth as much as $550 billion as a stand-alone company (that would make it the 17th biggest company in world as of April 2025).

And it all started with this unassuming 19 second video from co-founder Jawad Karim: "I am at the Zoo."

DPI is the New IRR? Caveat Emptor...

For the past year, private equity managers have sought to prioritize returning cash to investors after higher interest rates stifled deal activity and exits. The drop in distributions has left many financial institutions that invest in private equity with less money to allocate to future funds. As a consequence, DPI, or distributions to paid-in capital, has replaced IRR, or the internal rate of return as the most important measure of private equity performance—at least for the time being. 

IRR has long been favored by the private equity industry to demonstrate its superiority over public markets. And justify the hefty management and performance fees (?). IRR is a cash-weighted measure of return that takes into account the time value of money, which ROI, or return on investment, does not; which is helpful when committed capital is called over different points of time. However, there are also some unrealistic assumptions underpinning the mechanics of IRR calculations that can make returns appear more attractive than they really are. That effect is compounded by how private equity funds mark their assets. 

The value of an asset is whatever someone is willing to pay for it. But in the absence of an active market for said asset, its value is whatever the fund manager says it is. Now, to be fair, fund managers do consult third-party valuation experts and their valuation processes are usually audited by well-credentialed firms at least annually. Still, as owners and experts on said asset, the fund managers' views carry a lot of weight. And it's not really in their economic interest to aggressively mark things down. So, even when public markets gyrate wildly, private equity valuations tend to remain relatively stable, as fund managers hold out hope for better times. In fact, this is actually an attractive feature of private markets for many investors, to chagrin of others. 

But what if you have to sell? Recently, amidst funding cuts by the Trump administration, the liquidity needs of major university endowments have increased. For example, Yale is reportedly exploring the sale of up to a third of its private equity portfolio. And Harvard tapped the bond market raise $750 million to meet short-term needs. Heck, if multi-billion dollar endowments (like Harvard and Yale with $50.7B and $40.7B of assets, respectively) start selling their massive private equity portfolios to generate liquidity, fund managers are not going to be able avoid price discovery for very long. And investors, long shielded by IRRs, may find actual realized returns, or DPI, are a lot skinnier than they imagined.