Marc Hogan
LightNews LightNews
banner
marchogan.bsky.social
Marc Hogan
@marchogan.bsky.social
3.3K followers 1.1K following 770 posts
Freelance journalist. Bylines: FT, NYT, NPR, etc. Past lives: Pitchfork, SPIN, BusinessWeek. marchogan at gmail dot com. He/him. Iowa since 2009, but ex–NY, IL, MA, AZ, TN; CA native. https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-hogan-00b34b1a photo by Erol Reyal
Posts Replies Media Videos
marchogan.bsky.social
In a five-year-old class action on behalf of current and former Pennsylvania teachers, three investment consultants have now agreed to pay a total of $30 million. A fourth has yet to give up the fight. My latest for The Allocator/S&P Global. pardot.withintelligence.com/e/284832/l-2...
Payouts for PSERS Aksia is the lone consultant still fighting a pension client lawsuit that Hamilton Lane Advisors, Portfolio Advisors, and now Aon have paid a combined $30m+ to settle, according to court records. The lawsuit alleges that the four firms, as investment advisors and consultants, recommended unsuitably expensive investments to the $81.4B Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS). Suburban middle-school teacher Kevin Steinke originally filed the suit in Pennsylvania state court in June 2021, alleging that PSERS paid its expert advisors millions of dollars for woeful returns — while also paying “exorbitant” fees to private investment managers. Aksia, Aon, Hamilton Lane, and Portfolio Advisors all denied the allegations, but three out of the four have now settled. Last fall, Hamilton Lane agreed to pay $4m and Portfolio Advisors $11.25m in a joint settlement approved last fall, according to court documents. Aon is the latest to relent, striking a $15m payout deal, per new court docs. This is on top of $7m Aon paid its grumpy customer in 2024 over errors in a 2020 risk share analysis. With Pennsylvania-based Hamilton Lane dropped from the suit, Aksia and Aon filed last December to move the case to federal court, albeit still in Philly. The teacher’s lawyers asked that the case be sent back to state court, contending in a January filing that Aksia and Aon missed a 30-day window for making the matter federal. Aksia and Aon have since opposed that request, arguing that the 30-day window began later than the teacher’s attorneys claim and that they were well within it. PSERS’ most recent annual report, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025, lists Aksia as a private markets consultant and Portfolio Advisors as a private equity fund manager. The report doesn’t refer to Aon or Hamilton Lane. Portfolio Advisors was acquired by FS Investments in 2023, and last year they rebranded together as Future Standard. Representatives for all parties involved didn’t immediately respond to The Allocator’s requests for comment. —Marc Hogan
February 5, 2026 at 1:11 AM
marchogan.bsky.social
Hey, not every day I get cited in a statement before the U.S. Senate www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...
Footnote: 12 Marc Hogan, A Guide to “Fan” Organizations Funded by the Ticketing Industry, Pitchfork (Aug. 3, 2023), https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/consumer-groups-take-money-from-ticketing-industry/
January 29, 2026 at 1:30 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
While many of you are likely yelling "go Harry Styles" or "it's negative degrees outside" I'm yelling "I put a Bun B reference in a newsletter article about asset-backed finance" OK actually this post format doesn't work, posting anyway
II Trill As the new year settles in, credit ratings analysts are projecting private credit growth to continue to gain pace—and the risks associated with it to mount more quickly too. Assets under management focused on corporate direct lending will top $2trn by year-end and near $4trn in a decade, according to the 2026 outlook for private credit by Moody’s Ratings. What’s more, asset-backed finance—although more difficult to track—could potentially overtake traditional direct lending as alternative asset managers seek out consumer loans, data infrastructure credit, and other newer, more diverse asset pools, the ratings agency said. We also predict further ABF dominance. ABF is “the new frontier for private credit,” Moody’s global head of private credit, Marc Pinto, told Bloomberg, which first reported the news. (Pinto wasn’t available for an interview with The Allocator prior to deadline.) However, all this innovation has also spawned new risks. The recent defaults at First Brands and Tricolor drive home the risks of off-balance-sheet financing, right as such transactions increase in the ABF space, the Moody’s outlook notes. What’s more, the expansion of ABF into cyclical areas such as consumer or small business receivables could lead to potential performance volatility. “ABF deals’ structural protections and lender oversight will be key in mitigating downside risks to investors,” the Moody’s analyst team writes. Although ABF represents a “significant growth” space for private credit, running a successful ABF portfolio depends on areas of strength that aren’t exactly universal, according to Kroll Bond Rating Agency’s 2026 outlook for private credit. These factors include operational infrastructure, monitoring and execution capabilities, and asset-level expertise. Meanwhile, back in direct lending, KBRA forecasts the default rate will rise slightly in 2026. For allocators, careful manager selection seems critical. They’re set to have an embarrassment of opportunities this year in private credit. But buyer beware. —Marc Hogan
January 23, 2026 at 9:58 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
Was doing some research today that reminded me to check up on 3-D movies. A futuristic technology decades in the making that became genuinely popular and then faded away due to quality control and cost issues. Many such cases. trends.google.com/explore?q=%2...
A Google Trends chart for search term "3-D movies" and its popularity from 2004 to present. Line go up, then line go down (and, more recently, flatline).
January 22, 2026 at 11:11 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
I enjoyed overseeing today's The Allocator newsletter (from With Intelligence/S&P Global) while founder Leanna Orr is away. I wrote about animated GIFs!

Subscription info for institutional investing pros, very few of whom likely follow me here but hey: pardot.withintelligence.com/e/284832/l-2...
Subject: Pure Moods How do you do, fellow meme investors? The Scoop Popcorn.gif, But Michael Jackson Is Watching the Stock Market There’s more to animated GIFs—the short, looping video clips that have become the dominant visual shorthand of social media platforms—than meets the eye. The dynamic images that investors post online can stand in as a proxy for market sentiment, according to the new academic paper “GIFfluence: A Visual Approach to Investor Sentiment and the Stock Market.” Ingeniously, the researchers focused on GIFs embedded in messages posted on Stocktwits.com, a platform for sharing opinions about financial assets. Stocktwits allows users to self-declare posts as bullish or bearish, so the scholars had a ready-made way to determine the bullishness or bearishness of particular visuals. (This text is followed by the actual animated GIF of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.) In 2020, Stocktwits began giving users a built-in tool for searching GIPHY, a vast repository of animated GIFs from the infamous “distracted boyfriend” to that viral blinking guy to Homer Simpson disappearing backwards into the bushes. Based on millions of GIF-bearing Stocktwits posts from 2020 to 2024, the researchers built a sentiment index, which they aptly call GIFsentiment. Meme stocks are one thing, but GIFsentiment uses memes to measure the mood on Wall Street. Apparently, it works. The sentiment index predicts aggregate stock market returns for up to one month ahead, the researchers find. “GIF sentiment reflects how investors feel, not what they know,” said one of the paper’s authors, Shijia Wu of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, reached via email due to time zone differences. The evidence shows that a higher GIFsentiment reading predicts short-term market strength—but also signals emotional overreaction and later reversals, Wu told The Allocator. So when it comes to institutional investors, the index is more relevant for risk management than for return forecasting, she explained. And is there a meme for “irrational exuberance”? The GIFsentiment index mainly pinpoints moments of excessive bullishness, rising volatility, and reallocations across asset classes, according to Wu. “For asset allocators,” she continued, “this means GIF sentiment can be used as a behavioral overlay: a tool to flag sentiment-driven risk, crowded positioning, and moments when markets may be more vulnerable to corrections, rather than as a signal to increase exposure.” Here’s to that. (this is followed by the actual animated GIF of Leonard DiCaprio toasting in The Great Gatsby)
January 20, 2026 at 10:04 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
New from me in S&P Global's The Allocator newsletter: Pension funds rarely win lawsuits over investment losses, as a Missouri pension's recent legal defeat shows. Subscription info: pardot.withintelligence.com/e/284832/l-2...
Get Mad, Not Even Suing managers after investment losses is about as bad a strategy for making money as whatever those managers were doing to lose it in first place. A recent defeat in court for the $10.2B Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System (MOSERS) added another case to the point. A Missouri state court judge last month tossed MOSERS’ five-year-old lawsuit accusing Toronto-based Catalyst Capital Group of mismanaging some of the pension’s investments. In a Dec. 19 ruling, Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green also ordered MOSERS to pay the private equity firm’s defense costs. Missouri’s largest state employee pension plan initially sued the Canadian buyout firm in October 2020. An amended version of the suit, filed in December 2021 and obtained by The Allocator, says Catalyst’s alleged misconduct caused “hundreds of millions of dollars of losses to innocent investors, including MOSERS.” The amended suit is partially redacted and doesn’t specify how much MOSERS itself allegedly lost on the investments. However, MOSERS said at a 2020 hearing that it lost about $59.2m across three Catalyst funds, the Missouri Independent reports. Lawyers for MOSERS said in court appearances that the pension invested $120 million of $175 million it committed to the funds, according to the Independent. The suit’s ultimate dismissal came after a series of rulings trimming MOSERS’ case. In one January 2025 order, the judge held that MOSERS could not pursue damages on behalf of all investors in the funds because it had failed to involve the other investors—including the $2.5bn University of Missouri—in the suit. Chuck Hatfield, an attorney representing Catalyst, said the ruling barring MOSERS from suing on behalf of its fellow shareholders was “the big blow” to the pension’s side. “That changed the momentum in the case completely,” Hatfield told The Allocator in an interview. “They were on an island when it came to pursuing these claims.” MOSERS spokesperson Candy Smith said the pension’s board would continue to assess next steps. “The judge’s rulings did not evaluate the actual misconduct at issue,” Smith said in an emailed statement to The Allocator. Institutional investors rarely win on claims against asset managers related to investment losses, said securities attorney Robert Heim, a partner at Tarter Krinsky & Drogis, who is not involved in the case. “Courts can be very skeptical of these claims, for a variety of reasons,” Heim told The Allocator. He noted the sophistication of institutional investors and their access to legal advice, as well as the typical amount of risk disclosure they receive from GPs. Hatfield, the Catalyst attorney, acknowledged that MOSERS’ lawyers had their work cut out for them. “It is an extremely high bar for one disgruntled limited partner to try to control the fund through litigation,” he said. “There is a reason you don’t see a lot of suits like this.” —Marc Hogan
January 15, 2026 at 2:02 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
ha that reminds me of the a Ghost of Social Apps Past, Peach dot Cool, and the time I got a presumably fake invitation to connect from one Justin
An email notification from 2016 that someone allegedly named justin (boniver)"wants to be friends" on the now-defunct social media app Peach. Presumably this was not really Justin from Bon Iver.
January 14, 2026 at 7:51 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
A colorful story from before the holiday break: A Las Vegas investor who posts influencer content as Kris Krāze has filed a lawsuit over an alleged "sham" family office in Florida. My latest for The Allocator newsletter, from With Intelligence/S&P Global. pardot.withintelligence.com/e/284832/l-2...
Florida Man Fakes a Family Office Justin Godur and his father, Jaime Godur, both based in Boca Raton, “operated through a so-called ‘family office’ to project an illusion of immense wealth and success,” according to a recent lawsuit against the pair.   “By leveraging this facade,” the suit continues, the Godurs induced Nevada investor Kristopher Mullins and his Las Vegas-based business KCM Investments “to pay nearly half a million dollars for illusory lines of credit, sham business opportunities, and other nonexistent ventures.”    Capital Max’s website is no longer online, but a LinkedIn page still exists. As recently as February, the website called Capital Max “a commercial real estate family office” that offered “creative financing to help our clients fund deals,” supposedly including a $36.5m construction project in Miami, according to an archived page on the Wayback Machine.  Elsewhere, the site describes Capital Max as an “investment, advisory, and fund placement firm, with a focus on alternative investments.”    As for the plaintiff, Mullins also posts influencer-style online business content under the alias Kris Krāze. His YouTube channel has 164 videos and 900 subscribers.  According to the suit, Mullins and a business partner met Justin Godur in Las Vegas in November 2023. “Based on Godur’s representations, Mullins understood that Godur and his family ran a highly successful and wealthy family office comprised of different entities that offered lending to high-end clients for high-value investments and real estate purchases,” the complaint states.    Long story short(ish): From November 2023 to March 2024, Godur allegedly induced Mullins to pay Capital Max, then known as Q7Capital Group, a total of $430,000 to secure three lines of credit adding up to $750m. More payments followed. In the meantime, Mullins became chief marketing officer of the rebranded Capital Max in April 2024, traveling to Florida for two weeks at a time for the job. He wangled quotes as an expert source in articles by National Mortgage Professional, Realtor.com, Consumer Affairs, and more.      The case gets complicated in summer 2024. Around this time, Godur hired DeFrank as Capital Max’s director of real estate, according to the suit. Godur also allegedly told Mullins about a potential deal where an affiliate called Pinnacle One Capital Group would buy a residential property in Deerfield Beach and remodel it to add a second story.    According to the suit, Godur and DeFrank got Mullins to agree in advance that he would buy the Deerfield Beach property from Pinnacle Capital after the remodel.  Two of the non-Godur owners of Pinnacle Capital told Mullins in November 2024 that they believed Justin Godur had misappropriated $1m from a Pinnacle Capital fund, the suit says.    Will the real Kris Krāze please stand up?    Confronted by Mullins, Godur said he had never applied for one of the lines of credit but maintained that the other payments were legit, the complaint says.   Godur also allegedly told Mullins that the Deerfield Beach property could not, in fact, support a second story. Godur agreed in late November 2024 to repay Mullins $445,000, according to the suit. Eventually, Mullins was also able to cancel the purchase agreement for the Deerfield Beach property.    Shockingly, the accused phony family office head did not repay the real-life money, the complaint says. Ever the optimists that one day Capital Max would be a real firm, Godur promised to pay Mullins an additional $250,000 for his work as chief marketing officer.   Shockingly, the accused phony family office head did not repay the real-life money, the complaint says. Ever the optimists that one day Capital Max would be a real firm, Godur promised to pay Mullins an additional $250,000 for his work as chief marketing officer.   The Pinnacle Capital lawsuit    Pinnacle Capital sued Justin Godur, Jaime Godur, Mullins, and Capital Max in June 2025. The lawsuit alleges that to induce Pinnacle Capital to buy the Deerfield Beach property, Godur presented a misleading purchase agreement with Mullins’ help. The case is ongoing, state court records show.  Mullins, stiffed on his promised pay, is seeking damages for violations of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, as well as civil conspiracy and various fraud-related counts.   A lawyer for Mullins and KCM Investments didn’t respond to a request for comment. The named attorneys for the defendants were unable to answer questions, as they’d quit or been dropped from the case. The 3,000+ single-family offices tracked by With Intelligence—real ones, we’re pretty sure—had $4.7trn in combined investable assets as of September. —Marc Hogan
January 6, 2026 at 10:47 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
Really weird footnote in 2024's lavishly blurbed R.E.M. band biography www.google.com/books/editio...
* "Awards! They do nothing but give out awards!" Woody Allen's character Alvy Singer grumbles about Los Angeles and/or show business in general in the film Annie Hall. "Greatest fascist dictator, Adolf Hitler!" Say what you will about W.A.'s personal life; he was on point there.
January 2, 2026 at 1:49 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
You say corporate magazines still suck, and yet
A screenshot of the news headline "Nirvana raises $100mn Series D at $1.5bn valuation"
December 19, 2025 at 1:25 AM
marchogan.bsky.social
Wearing my institutional-investing reporter hat, wrote about new academic research showing that US public pension plans, when overallocated to private equity, increasingly use secondary sales to rebalance. My latest for The Allocator newsletter (from With Intelligence/S&P Global).
First Shall Be Secondary US public pension plans that are overallocated to private equity increasingly use secondary sales to rebalance, according to the academic paper “Overallocated Investors and Secondary Transactions.” Overallocated pension plans were 8.6 percentage points more likely than underallocated plans to sell private equity stakes, finds the paper. Other factors such as liquidity needs, funding ratio, and plan size played less of a role. The authors — University of Virginia’s Rustam Abuzov, University of Amsterdam’s Aleksandar Andonov, and Harvard University’s Josh Lerner — pored over 1,278 secondary sales by 137 US public pension plans between 2021 and 2022. The researchers then matched the secondary sales with public data on the plans’ actual and target asset allocations. Secondary sales, despite the cost of typically having to sell funds at a discount, provide an immediate way for LPs to rebalance illiquid portfolios, the paper notes. By contrast, tweaking target allocations can be a lengthy process and often requires board approval, while reducing new commitments may mess up pacing plans or create tensions with GPs. The results should apply to all types of institutional investors with firm asset allocation policy targets, although only US public pension plan data was available to study, co-author Aleksandar Andonov told The Allocator in an interview. “Usually we don’t get a lot of evidence on what happens beyond the initial commitments, and we do see that there is increased management of the exposure to private equity beyond the initial commitments,” he said. “Of course there can be many factors driving secondary sales,” Andonov continued, but when overweight in private equity, “many pension funds these days do tend to resort to secondary sales” The researchers chose to focus on a period with sharp market volatility. Private equity’s portfolio share grows automatically during public market downturns, because private equity valuations adjust more slowly. The private equity overallocation issue could become more glaring. After all, as private equity allocations grow to take up a larger share of a portfolio, “similar return differences will cause more overallocation in terms of percentage points,” Andonov said. “This was not an issue when private equity was, say, 1% or 2% of assets. Then, it’s a noise.” The findings suggest that LPs will look for more flexibility when it comes to investment vehicles, because they want to be able to exit without needing to hold a fund until the end of its life, according to Andonov. Indeed, the paper points to the rise of co-investment vehicles and continuation funds. LPs — and their boards — should also consider that if they want to invest significantly in private markets, they may need to be more flexible with target weights, Andonov said. Could this be another argument for the total portfolio approach, which CalPERS recently adopted? “That approach gives, on paper, more flexibility,” Andonov said. “But in both cases, it requires strong governance.”
December 8, 2025 at 1:37 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
An investment officer at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System has sued the pension plan and a recently retired investment director, alleging that their anti-Black discrimination against him led to potentially $10bn in losses. Wrote about it for The Allocator, now part of S&P Global.
CalSTRS Sued Over Alleged Anti-Black Bias The California State Teachers’ Retirement System is accused of racial discrimination against a Black investment officer. Former investment officer Ibukunoluwa Aina filed the suit last month in state court in Sacramento. It contends that CalSTRS and Steven Tong — the $385.8bn fund’s recently retired director of risk-mitigating strategies —denied Aina multiple promotion opportunities and undercut his work, causing substantial losses to the plan. A CalSTRS spokesperson declined to comment. Attempts to reach Tong by phone and email weren’t successful. A report on diversity said CalSTRS strives to achieve workforce diversity. Of the investment branch’s 225 non-administrative staff members, 107 were white (48%), 69 were Asian (31%), 25 were Hispanic (11%), and 10 (4%) were Black, according to the report. Of 14 investment directors, the level including CIO Scott Chan, 10 were white, while the other four were Asian. “Soft Skills” Aina joined the investment team at CalSTRS in January 2020, receiving salary raises, incentive bonuses, and a promotion, according to the 22-page complaint. Multiple documents on the CalSTRS website confirm his position with the risk mitigating strategies portfolio. Aina applied for an associate portfolio manager role overseeing strategy and risk, which was an entry-level management position, in late 2022, the suit asserts. However, Tong allegedly told Aina, without explanation, that a committee had requested Aina’s name be removed from the list of interviewees for the position. When no suitable candidate was found, CalSTRS readvertised the job later in 2022, and Aina raised concerns with Tong about his exclusion from the initial interview pool, according to the suit. Afterward, Tong targeted Aina for broaching his worries about possible racial discrimination in the organization, the complaint alleges. Aina interviewed for the readvertised role, but CalSTRS discriminated against him by giving the role to a white employee who was less qualified, the suit claims. Tong went on to relieve this person of most of their risk management duties, announcing in early 2023 that he would be separating risk management from the role, according to the court filing. Aina again offered himself for the risk management role, but CalSTRS discriminated against him again by once again assigning the job to a white employee who was less qualified, the suit alleges. Fast forward a few months to July 2023. Aina applied for another opening for an associate portfolio manager, and Tong told him he could not be promoted because he lacked what Tong allegedly called “soft skills,” according to the complaint. To ensure no reasonable case could be made for Aina’s further career progression, Tong tried to undermine his professional work, rejecting Aina’s contributions, suggestions, and ideas on the management of the risk management strategies portfolio, the court filing alleges. Tong’s alleged actions may have cost the pension plan more than $10bn in investment losses and underperformance between late 2022 and mid-2025, according to the suit. Aina filed an internal complaint with CalSTRS in November 2023, and he later filed a complaint with the California Department of Civil Rights that was formalized in December 2024, the suit says. Aina applied for a portfolio manager role in May 2025, but CalSTRS discriminated against him again by yet another time offering the job to a white employee who was less qualified, the document alleges. Also in May, CalSTRS announced that Tong would be retiring. “$10bn price tag” Aina filed a whistleblower complaint about the alleged economic losses with the California State Auditor General’s Office in June, according to the lawsuit. Tong’s last day at Calstrs was July 31. Aina withdrew his case from the California Department of Civil Rights in September, and the agency granted him the right to file a private civil suit, per the complaint. Aina alleges discrimination based on race as well as based on his Nigerian national origin, along with breach of fiduciary duty and retaliation, the suit says. He’s seeking damages, back pay, and corrective action, plus court orders compelling CalSTRS to address various alleged disparities affecting “non-white and non-Asian employees,” per the filing. “This act of discrimination seemed to have had a $10bn price tag attached to it, and this should be punished significantly to prevent a repeat of such actions by any group of employees within and outside California who are well remunerated to protect Other People’s Money,” the complaint states. In an interview with The Allocator, Aina confirmed he still works at CalSTRS and said he filed the lawsuit to protect the interests of more than 1m California teachers. He is not represented by a lawyer. “I’m hoping it can be resolved,” he said. “I feel very disappointed.”
December 6, 2025 at 2:18 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
Wrote again about what seems to me like one of the year's big stories, life insurers pouring money into credit vehicles that are less liquid and more opaque, for The Allocator newsletter. This time the news peg is a Moody's report. Subscription details: pardot.pageantmedia.com/l/284832/202...
Dance Like It’s the Last Day of Solvency Life insurance companies are rushing to credit’s center stage even as fresh scrutiny puts them under a spotlight, according to Moody’s research. Following the September collapse of subprime auto lender Tricolor Parts and car parts manufacturer First Brands, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon remarked that like cockroaches, more troubles lurked in the credit markets. Since then, BlackRock has acknowledged a 100% loss on a private loan, the chair of UBS warned of “looming systemic risk” from private credit ratings, and terms like “bad PIK” are mainstream. Large U.S. corporate bankruptcies are on pace for a 15-year high amid “credit jitters,” as Reuters delicately put it. Nevertheless, private credit — which tends to offer higher yields than publicly traded bonds — continues to expand, and life insurers keep gorging on it. Investments with private ratings, no formal rating from a credit agency, and with valuations based on significant unobservable inputs made up $685B — 18% — of the industry’s $3.8 trillion in fixed-income holdings at year-end 2024, according to Moody’s latest research. In the first half of 2025, those first two categories accounted for $118B or 23% of the US life insurance industry’s total bond spend (data on the third type, so-called Level 3 investments, wasn’t available). In other words, the broader financial and regulatory system sees what’s going on and alarms are sounding about the risks. Insurers know they’re under scrutiny and have kept at it, fattening their portfolios with private credit. The three life insurance companies with the most exposure to less-liquid credit as of year-end 2024, according to Moody’s, were: Security Benefit Life, owned by investment firm Eldridge Industries; Delaware Life, part of insurance holding company Group 1001; and MassMutual. Manoj Jethani, vice president and senior credit officer at Moody’s Ratings, told The Allocator in an interview that the question is which of these investments could come under pressure during an eventual downturn. “And the bigger question,” he said, “is which are the companies that are going to be holding these assets in some of those, and is there a correlation?” Moody’s is watchful – but the music is still playing, and life insurers dance like no one’s watching.
November 20, 2025 at 3:04 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
For The Allocator newsletter from With Intelligence, I talked to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's first-ever chief investment officer, Jack Mahler, about what he's excited to do after he retires at the end of the year. Subscription information: pardot.withintelligence.com/e/284832/l-2...
Jack Mahler: Over & Out When Jack Mahler retires at the end of the year, after nearly a decade as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s first chief investment officer, he’s looking forward to adding some frequent flier miles. “We’re headed to Chile, actually,” the $4.7bn allocator’s CIO since 2016 told The Allocator in an interview. “Patagonia.”  Mahler and his wife, Marla, have been trying to travel with some friends for the last five years but never have been able to get their schedules aligned. This year, they’re planning to take three weeks to go and check out “the amazing natural beauty,” Mahler said.   Along with travel, he’s also looking forward to spending time with the couple’s grandchildren.  “They’re really, really important to us,” he said. “We’ve stayed on a pace of trying to see them every other month, but it’s not always easy.”  Retirement, he expects, will help. But slowing down may not be easy.  Before joining the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Mahler was the head of equities and alternatives at OMERS for seven years. Unusually for an allocator, Mahler is an MD, and worked in clinical research at Cornell University Medical College before heading to Columbia University Business School with plans of becoming a physical executive. Finance, fueled by a mission, won him over. With Mahler as CIO, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation noted in a press release, the nonprofit built a diversified portfolio and pursued a “venture philanthropy” approach to power cystic fibrosis treatments.   He’s succeeded at the Bethesda, Md.-based foundation by Adela Skenderasi, who was most recently partner and senior member of the OCIO investment team at Brown Advisory. Previously, she held investment roles at the International Monetary Fund and Georgetown University. It’s a CV that suggests the foundation could be well positioned for its next chapter.  As for Mahler, beyond sightseeing and family, there are other aspects of what he called “the next phase of life” that he’s still mulling. A retired friend recently advised him not to do anything in the first year, such as serving on boards, but Mahler doesn’t know that he’ll follow the recommendation.      “His point is, you know, it clears your mind and then you can really decide what you want to do rather than just naturally continue what you’ve been doing, or a version of it,” he said. “So we’ll see how good I am at that. I don’t know yet.  “It’s hard to step back and just focus on your life and not think about giving back to the community in some way, shape, or form.”  —Marc Hogan
November 12, 2025 at 3:01 AM
marchogan.bsky.social
👀 had a feeling about this a year ago: www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/a...
“Monster Mash,” Bobby Pickett’s enduring Halloween anthem from 1962, has returned to the Billboard Hot 100 the last three years ahead of the holiday. And Billboard estimated last year that the hit could generate $1 million in annual combined revenue. Rell Lafargue, the president of Reservoir, which owns Pickett’s publishing share, said money from the song has roughly tripled from 2019 to 2023. He also cited licensing opportunities, including greeting cards, wreaths and plush toys. There’s even a planned “Monster Mash” stage musical, aimed at a 2025 debut, and the song may figure into future movies and TV shows.
October 29, 2025 at 12:37 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
Wrote about the battle over the Ohio teacher pension board, for The Allocator newsletter. Subscription information is here: www.withintelligence.com/investors-re...
Showdown at Ohio Teachers’ An Ohio judge has blocked state officials’ plans to shake up the board of the $102.5B State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio. Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Carl Aveni on October 15 granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit by teacher groups challenging the changes as unconstitutional and discriminatory. For decades, according to the ruling, the 11-member Ohio STRS board has consisted of seven elected teachers—five active, two retired—and four state appointees. A provision in an Ohio budget bill signed in June by Republican Governor Mike DeWine aimed to flip the board’s makeup. Under the new law, teachers and retirees would have three elected seats by 2028. The remaining eight board members would be appointed by the governor, state treasurer, and legislative leaders. Members of the Ohio Education Association, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, and the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors sued the Ohio STRS board last month challenging the budget provision. Another state court judge blocked the planned overhaul on an interim basis in September. But the preliminary injunction would last until the case is decided. Another state court judge blocked the planned overhaul on an interim basis in September. But the preliminary injunction would last until the case is decided. The teachers “are likely to prevail upon the merits in their constitutional challenge,” Judge Aveni wrote in a 24-page opinion. He called the board provision “wrongly grafted onto the otherwise wholly separate single-subject appropriations bill” and found that the measure wasn’t considered on “three separate days” as required. Spokespeople for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who represents the defendants, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Yost sued last year to remove two members from the board; the case is ongoing, state court records show. Ohio STRS in April named Aaron DiCenzo, the system’s head of alternatives since 2021, as interim CIO. DiCenzo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, either. The teacher groups applauded the court’s injunction. “This is an unconstitutional power grab by the legislature,” said OEA President Jeff Wensing, OFT President Melissa Cropper, and OC AAUP Executive Director Sara Kilpatrick in a joint statement. “Educators, just like all other public employees in Ohio, deserve a meaningful voice in our pension plan.” DiCenzo succeeded Matthew Worley, who retired in March after 31 years with Ohio STRS. The allocator’s boardroom overseers, too, have seen their share of turnover recently, with a pair of board members resigning last year amid more drama than can be detailed here. The board’s composition structure, at least, remains in place for now. —Marc Hogan
October 25, 2025 at 2:35 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
A lot of people enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in Des Moines yesterday. Couldn’t find where they allegedly got their paychecks.
The Iowa Capitol building during the No Kings rally
October 19, 2025 at 2:39 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
As a constituent, I emailed Chuck Grassley about Trump telling military leaders that troops should use Democratic-run cities as "training grounds" to fight the "enemy within." Here's his reply. Oddly enough, he used to worry about Posse Comitatus... in 1997: www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-re...
October 16, 2025 Dear Marc: Thank you for taking the time to contact me. As your senator, it is important for me to hear about the issues that concern you. I appreciate hearing your concerns regarding the potential use of military troops through the Insurrection Act in responding to protests. The Insurrection Act has been law since 1807 and states “Whenever the President considers unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws … in any State … he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.” The Insurrection Act has been invoked a dozen times in U.S. history. Examples include President Eisenhower’s decision in 1957 to enforce the desegregation of Central Little Rock High School in Little Rock, Arkansas following Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act in 1992 during the Los Angeles Riots and federalized the California National Guard to stop the rioting. There are statutory protections in place to prevent abusive domestic use of military forces. The Posse Comitatus Act, which was passed in 1878, outlaws the willful use of any part of the Armed Forces to execute the law unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress. Existing case law also states that "execution of the law" in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act occurs (a) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to an organ of civil government, or (b) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to them solely for purposes of civilian government. The Act is not violated when the Armed Forces conduct activities for a military purpose such as training exercises. Should the Senate consider legislation concerning the Posse Comitatus Act, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind. Again, thank…
October 17, 2025 at 3:40 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
A Michigan pension fund is suing a Swiss firm and its two principals over $52.7 million they allegedly poured into a failing investment to salvage their own personal stakes. My latest for The Allocator. Subscription info: pardot.withintelligence.com/e/284832/l-2...
A $52.7m Mess The Municipal Employees’ Retirement System of Michigan has sued Switzerland-based investment firm Verdantf and its two principals, Berry Polmann and Gaia Arnaboldi, over an allegedly unrecouped investment of more than $52.7M. The $15.3bn allocator—also known as MERS—filed the lawsuit on September 30 in federal district court in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The suit claims that Polmann and Arnaboldi secretly bought personal stakes in certain entities in which Verdantf was also investing MERS’ assets, creating a conflict of interest. When it should have become clear to Verdantf that the investments were failing, the 65-page complaint asserts, the defendants instead allegedly “doubled down,” pouring more of MERS’ funds into the investments “because they were attempting to salvage their undisclosed, conflicted personal interests in these investments.” David Fink, a Michigan lawyer representing Verdantf and Polmann, roundly denied the allegations. “This lawsuit is a shameless attempt by MERS to walk away from the fees that Verdantf earned,” he said in an interview with The Allocator. As for the personal investments that the Verdantf principals were allegedly making alongside Verdantf’s deployments of MERS’ capital, Fink said, “These types of co-investments are very common in the industry and were fully known to MERS every step of the way.” He further denied the allegation that MERS has yet to recover the more than $52.7m. “MERS does not understand the value of its investment,” Fink said. Arnaboldi hasn’t formally responded to the allegations, court records show, and emails sent to addresses associated with her didn’t immediately elicit a response. She is no longer with Verdantf, according to a LinkedIn profile. Polmann and Arnaboldi began providing investment advisory services for MERS more than a decade ago, when they were with a previous firm. When they left to found Verdantf in 2015, MERS hired them as part of a strategy to identify emerging real asset managers, the suit says. In March 2016, MERS and Verdantf entered into an investment management agreement providing Verdantf with “full fiduciary responsibility” over a $150m pool, court documents show. Soon after finalizing the agreement, Verdantf started investing MERS’ assets in a series of alternative energy companies called Concord Blue, the suit asserts. Verdantf invested a total of $56,555,079 of MERS’ assets in the Concord Blue ventures, from which MERS received only a dividend of $3,845,064 in 2016, per the allegations. However, the suit alleges that Verdantf, Polmann, and Arnaboldi consistently misrepresented the health of the Concord Blue investments and failed to disclose material facts, such as Lockheed Martin’s June 2021 termination of a contract with a pair of Concord Blue entities. MERS terminated the investment management agreement with Verdantf in 2023, court documents show. The allocator hasn’t recovered any portion of the net $52,710,015 of its assets that Verdantf invested in Concord Blue entities, the suit claims. Because of the defendants’ actions, the complaint further maintains, MERS is unlikely to receive any material recovery on the investments. The suit alleges fraud, negligent misrepresentation, bad faith, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, and violations of securities laws. MERS is seeking an unspecified monetary award, plus a judgment rescinding the investment management agreement, according to the suit. “As fiduciary for the retirement plans of Michigan’s public servants, we are committed to holding our investment managers to the highest standards of integrity and ensuring they act in the best interest of our participants,” a MERS spokesperson told The Allocator in an emailed statement. Summarizing the publicly filed allegations, the spokesperson continued: “Verdantf and its principals acted dishonestly, managed investments poorly, broke their promises, and failed to follow the law. As a result, MERS has asked the court to hold them accountable on behalf of Michigan’s hardworking public employees.” On October 2, Verdantf and Polmann filed a motion asking the court to seal the original complaint and certain of its (hundreds of pages of) accompanying exhibits, citing “a risk of significant business and reputational harm” to non-party entities named in them. The next day, U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney granted the request. The suit, and the Concord Blue entities’ alleged involvement, were also reported by Law.com. —Marc Hogan
October 10, 2025 at 2:26 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
Wrote about a billionaire giving away money to help fight cancer, for With Intelligence's The Allocator newsletter. Local angle: The target audience (investment pros at institutions such as pension funds, foundations, and university endowments) could spy a job opportunity.
Just Do It (Polish Up Your CV) A multi-billion-dollar asset allocator role could be opening up before too long in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon Health & Science University recently announced a $2B gift from Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, to the Portland-based academic health system’s cancer institute. OHSU receives backing from the $1.5B OHSU Foundation, overseen by a volunteer board of trustees drawn from the local business and civic community. That said, with the Knights’ massive commitment, the cancer institute will become self-governed within OHSU, according to the announcement. A newly created Knight Cancer Group, with its own board of directors, will lead the institute. Asked who would be running the new influx of money, an OHSU spokesperson didn’t immediately rule out the possibility of hiring a new CIO (or OCIO, for that matter). “There is a lot to put in place, and this will be determined through the planning process underway now,” the spokesperson said, in an email to The Allocator. “The structure of KCG, including its board, will be decided within the next few months.” The time frame for the gift hitting OHSU’s coffers will be a bit longer: 10 years, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting, which reported on a gathering to announce the donation. KCG’s inaugural president will be Dr. Brian Druker, the cancer institute’s chairman of leukemia research. OHSU named its cancer institute after the Knights upon receiving a $100 million gift from them in 2008. The Oregon couple gave another $500 million to OHSU in 2013 on the condition (successfully met) that it be matched dollar for dollar within two years. OHSU said the Knight’s latest largesse was the largest single donation ever made to a U.S. university, college, or academic health center. Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and former New York City mayor, committed $1.8B to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, in 2018. To be sure, a potential job allocating assets for the newly formed KCG wouldn’t be all Nike swooshes and cancer cures. Like other institutions of higher learning, OHSU has been grappling with the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to funding given out by the National Institutes, including for cancer research. Trump has also terminated hundreds of NIH grants. OHSU was confronting financial woes even before the change in the White House, with operating losses, layoffs, and a credit rating downgrade. Dr. Druker said of the Knights’ $2B gift, as quoted by Oregon Public Broadcasting, “We’re just so grateful, not only for the generosity, but also the timing.” For the right allocator with itchy feet, the sentiment might be the same. —Marc Hogan
September 29, 2025 at 1:23 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
In private credit, the contract *is* the market, according to a fascinating new paper by NYU Stern's Elham Saeidinezhad. Talked to her and wrote excitably about it for With Intelligence's The Allocator newsletter. The research is here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
The Contract Is the Market In private credit, yield and liquidity are deliberately engineered through contractual design rather than discovered through trading activity, according to academic paper “The Covenant Structure of Yield in Private Credit: A Contractually Defined Valuation Model.” Armed with this knowledge, the paper contends, LPs can take advantage of the legal provisions of private credit covenants to help achieve their investment goals. “These covenants may sound like some boring contractual feature,” said Elham Saeidinezhad, an economics professor at NYU Stern, in an interview with The Allocator. “One big takeaway from this whole paper for the LPs would be, ‘Look, you guys can use these covenants for your benefit.’” The research was initially prompted by the market debut earlier this year of the first exchange-traded fund focused on private credit, Saeidinezhad said. The State Street Global Advisors ETF, developed with Apollo Global Management, raised liquidity concerns among regulators and investors. The prevailing frameworks for valuing private credit are still drawn from private equity and, before that, public markets, according to the paper. These valuation methods fail to grapple with how liquidity works in an asset class of bespoke, illiquid instruments, the study argues. “Private credit is not merely illiquid,” Saeidinezhad writes. “It is non-fungible. Each instrument is uniquely structured to fit the risk, timing, and control preferences of both borrower and lender, and cannot be priced or traded as a substitute.” The central driver of value in private credit, she argues, is what the paper calls—in what seems to be a novel and potentially useful coinage— “contractually defined liquidity.” To account for contractually defined liquidity, Saeidinezhad proposes a fresh valuation approach, which she terms the “covenant structure approach.” This covenant structure approach to valuing private credit is based on a three-layered hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy are the covenants that govern exit pathways, or what the paper calls “exit engineering”: clauses such as NAV-based resets, take-out provisions, change-of-control triggers, and cash flow sweeps. Next are the covenants that determine the potential for options, or the “optionality structuring”: clauses such as call protections, equity kickers, prepayment penalties, and ratchets. At the base of the hierarchy is “cash flow pacing,” or the covenants deciding the timing and cadence of payments: instruments such as payment-in-kind toggles, amortization schedules, deferred interest provisions, and step-up/down coupons structure. “It’s like a cooking instruction,” Saeidinezhad said of her framework for valuing private credit based on covenant structure. “Five steps to create apple pie, or something like that.” Within private credit, this valuation framework probably applies best outside of the infrastructure space, Saeidinezhad acknowledged. “You are building a railroad,” she said. “The price of the railroad is probably more important than the covenant structure of the private credit.” Allocators who read the full paper may also enjoy Saeidinezhad’s insights about commitment pacing. On this she was inspired by the work of Thomas Meyer, an author of private investment books who has argued that, through commitment pacing, LPs can transform illiquidity from a problem to be managed into a parameter to be designed. “Meyer is my prophet here,” Saeidinezhad said. The same logic applies at the deal or transaction level, the paper argues, looking at the example of a hypothetical university endowment that allocates $100m across four vintage-staggered private credit funds. Covenants such as cash sweep clauses or PIK toggles “are not passive legal features,” Saeidinezhad writes. Rather, they’re instruments that allocators can actively design. Saeidinezhad said she is working on a new paper about another concept that appears to have been freshly named wi… Here, that’s defined as “the return earned for accepting exposure that is gated, time-locked, and path-dependent by design.” Unlike the equity risk premium, which is determined by markets, the commitment premium is designed in advance through covenants. The current paper’s closing paragraph, which for this writer calls to mind media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum that “the medium is the message,” seems worth quoting in full: “In sum, this paper reconceives valuation in private credit as a problem of legal engineering. Yield is not revealed—it is authored. Where liquidity is not provided by market infrastructure, it must be constructed through covenant logic. In this setting, the contract is not just a record of terms—it is the valuation engine itself. In private credit, the contract is the market.” No wonder it took so long for someone to set up a private credit ETF. —Marc Hogan
September 25, 2025 at 2:00 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
The Texas employee pension system has beaten a workplace discrimination lawsuit, for now. Wrote about it for The Allocator newsletter from With Intelligence. Subscription info: pardot.pageantmedia.com/register-the...
Texas Pension Wins This Round Texas’s $42B employees’ pension system (ERS) has defeated, for now, a former investment employee’s lawsuit accusing it of racism and ageism. The alleged behavior in the case centered around an ill-timed investment in the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, the California regional bank that imploded in March 2023. Reached by The Allocator, a spokesperson for the Employees Retirement System of Texas declined to comment on the suit. Texas ERS hired Carlos Chujoy in April 2009 as a portfolio manager, according to a complaint filed last year in federal district court in Austin. Chujoy identifies as Asian, and he’s more than 40 years old, the complaint says. He reached director level with a base salary of close to $220,000. Despite favorable performance reviews, and allegedly without sharing a reason, Texas ERS CIO David Veal demoted Chujoy in August 2022, the lawsuit asserts. Chujoy’s former subordinate in the allocator’s investments division, John McCaffrey — now a managing director — became his direct supervisor. Around the same time, Veal allegedly removed Chujoy as a voting member of the Texas ERS risk committee and dismantled the risk management and applied research group he led. Through administrative staff, Veal also instructed Chujoy to vacate his office and move into a group office, the suit says. Matters allegedly came to a head several months later. Veal and McCaffrey sent a reprimand letter in March 2023 citing performance deficiencies relating to the realized loss from one of the fund’s SVB investments, per the complaint. Texas ERS made its bet on the stock at the recommendation of external equity investment advisor Brandywine Global, according to the court filing. Trade records show the allocator’s Brandywine-advised portfolio bought $2.8M in SVB stock on March 9, 2023, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal that’s cited in the suit. Regulators shut the bank down the next day. The suit contends that “i… Chujoy filed the suit against Texas ERS in May 2024, claiming that Veal and McCaffrey — who are not named as parties in the case — falsely blamed him for the SVB loss due to his race and age. Texas ERS denied any wrongdoing and asked the court to throw out the whole suit. Courts largely agreed with the organization earlier this month. In a ruling on September 3, U.S. Senior District Judge David Ezra handed the system a legal victory, tossing all of Chujoy’s claims. Ezra permanently dismissed two of the suit’s claims, for age-based discrimination and for race-based discrimination in a contractual relationship. In a 21-page order, the judge pointed to the legal doctrine called sovereign immunity, which prevents government entities from being sued. As for a third claim for race-based discrimination, Ezra held that Chujoy had not “made sufficient factual allegations” that he was forced to quit or that it was due to his race. “The office reassignment, although perhaps executed unceremoniously, does not arise to the level of requisite humiliation or harassment,” Ezra wrote. The judge granted Chujoy until October 3 to amend the claim. John Melton, a lawyer representing Chujoy, told The Allocator in an email that he intends to do just that. He declined to comment further. —Marc Hogan
September 22, 2025 at 2:05 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
Wrote about a legal dispute involving a Texas oil heiress, for The Allocator newsletter. Subscription info is here: pardot.pageantmedia.com/l/284832/202...
The Scoop Oil Money A Texas oil heiress is suing her former family office CIO for allegedly failing to repay more than $15M in personal loans. Jean Christine Thompson and Thompson Petroleum Corp. filed the lawsuit on August 19 in Texas state court. Christy Thompson is the daughter of the late Texas oil mogul James Cleo Thompson Jr., who started Thompson Petroleum with his father in the 1950s, according to a 2022 report in Forbes. The same report describes her as the sole head of a billion-dollar family office and “real estate empire.” Thompson is also the principal and owner of Thompson Petroleum. The defendants in the suit are Michael Mann — Thompson Petroleum’s short-tenured CIO, according to the complaint — and the Dallas-based venture capital firm he founded, Anchor Capital GP. Thompson met Mann in early 2022. A mutual friend — also a partner at Anchor — introduced them in early 2022. Thompson ended up investing more than $40M with Anchor Capital funds managed by Mann, Anchor GP, or both, according to the suit. Mann approached Thompson for a personal loan in September 2024, purporting to need the money to buy out one of his partners, the complaint asserts. He allegedly persuaded her by agreeing to guarantee the debt personally — representing that he had more than $24M in net assets — and by putting up Anchor GP’s assets, supposedly more than $19M, as collateral. Thompson agreed to lend Mann more money in January to buy out another partner, per the suit. Also in January, Thompson Petroleum hired Mann as CIO. Mann’s allegedly “lucrative” employment agreement — effective January 1 — required him to secure Thompson’s written pre-approval before committing the company to any new alternative investments, according to the suit. However, starting the same month, Mann committed Thompson Petroleum to at least five alternative investments without Mann’s knowledge or consent, the suit contends. These investments were “ill-advised” and “for Mann’s personal benefit,” per the court filing. When confronted with his alleged violations of the employment contract, Mann “flew into a rage and began insulting the company, both verbally and in writing, to other employees,” the complaint states, referring to “various rants.” Thompson Petroleum terminated Mann’s employment “for cause” on Feb. 28, per the suit. Thompson, through her lawyer, started requesting information about the state of her investments with Anchor Capital — and of the purported loan collateral. In May, Thompson asked Mann in writing for updated financial statements as well as access to Anchor GP’s books, according to the complaint. While Mann failed to comply with the requests, one document he did provide was a June 1 personal financial statement — and it contained “massive” discrepancies from the January 2024 statement he’d provided for the loans, the suit claims. “Missing from his June 2025 personal financial statement, for example, were millions in real estate, jewelry, cash, and other assets he had claimed he owned in his January statement,” the complaint states. In June and July, Thompson’s lawyer sent new demand letters and notified Mann that Thompson had decided to accelerate the debt, with an accelerated due date of August 18, 2025. To date, he has failed to pay or to produce his and Anchor GP’s books and records, according to the filing. Thompson is seeking the nearly $15.1M loan principal, plus interest, attorneys’ fees, damages, and costs, the court document says, relating to Mann’s alleged violations of the employment agreement, including “fraud,” “self-dealing,” and “engaging in hostile and offensive behavior toward colleagues.” “Over a three-year period, Mann wheedled his way into Thompson’s good graces, and her busines… Mann hasn’t formally replied to the complaint as of press time, court records show, and he didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Attorneys for Thompson also didn’t return a request for comment.
September 11, 2025 at 2:30 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
Loved this @larryfitzmaurice.bsky.social interview with Jens Lekman, especially having finally met Joel from Air France for the first time last year. Jens Mpls tickets secured! last-donut-of-the-night.ghost.io/jens-lekman-...
I remember an old interview with Yung Lean when he was probably in his late teens, and he was talking about how all the the rappers in Sweden were dissing him and he was like, "I never listened to Swedish rap—I listened to Air France." Just to hear that connection being established and realizing, "Yeah, this was actually the logical conclusion of this." You had these record labels like Service and Sincerely Yours, and what they were moving towards was definitely something like Yung Lean—you just needed a 16-year-old who was really into making that kind of music. I love it. I think they're great, and they are very connected to the remnants of that scene as well. I mean, Year0001 consists of a lot of people from that scene, for example.
September 11, 2025 at 2:26 PM
marchogan.bsky.social
August 12, 2004 lol
Lastly, you might be wondering whether you get paid for this gig. The painful truth is that, despite our ever-expanding readership, we're still awfully broke. Fortunately, I've just hired a new advertising director who thus far has proven very capable of turning that around. I'm optimistic that, by the end of the year, our standing will be much better, and we'll be able to offer better pay. For now, it's $10 per review, $20 per feature, and $3 for each We Are The World piece you write (or $10 for every three). The big catch here is that you have to write for us for six months before this takes effect, and when it does, it only counts for reviews you write AFTER that initial six-month period has ended. The reasons for this are manyfold: 1) I have to do paperwork for taxes at the end of the year, and since most of the people we lose fall off in the first six months, that's a bunch less W-2's I have to fill out; 2) It's mainly a perk to reward our dedicatos and loyalitos; 3) As previously stated, we're not exactly gettin' rich here. After the six months are up, it will be useful for you to know that our pay period covers reviews that ran on the website between the first and last days of each month, and that checks are sent quarterly.
September 3, 2025 at 5:55 PM