“People are still the primary resource of hedge funds. Can you name another industry that restrains sourcing to 30% (if that) of the available output? That said, I’m not an expert on diversity and inclusion or HR, just a casual observer. How I personally encourage diversity is by writing about it. I use my words, as they say in kindergarten.”
“It’s the opposite of when I started 20 years ago. It was a very small industry, small assets versus the market and opportunities, incredibly lucrative in the sense that there were few of us, and we could charge very high fees. If you think of the business in terms of supply and demand, there were a ton of opportunities, arbitrage, mispricing, a lack of information.”
“The volatility makes it harder for the parties to coalesce around a restructuring plan,” said Dominique Mielle, a former partner at Canyon Capital Advisors and the author of an upcoming book on distressed debt. “One day the equity of the company has no value and the next it does – that upends the previous day’s work.”
“Women lack examples of successful women in investing… which I think leads them to opt out of the career path. I set out to write the book for women to opt-in. I wanted to present a female success story.”
“Dominique Mielle, a white woman who was named a director of REIT Anworth Mortgage Asset Corp in November, said forces like the “#MeToo” movement have encouraged boards to add women first, lest top investors withhold support in corporate elections. “If they say no to your slate of directors, that’s a problem.”
“It’s a vicious cycle,” says Dominique Mielle, recently retired as the only female investing partner at hedge-fund giant Canyon Capital. “The only women we know that exist at hedge funds are in IR or sales, and therefore that’s where they put them.”
“Earlier this year, a former hedge-fund manager named Dominique Mielle pointed out in an article for Business Insider that the financial industry was hurting its own profits by refusing to be more inclusive toward women and other underrepresented groups. Herd behavior, Mielle wrote, leads to bad decision-making.”