Program on Alternative Investments: Alicia Ogawa BY ARNOLD KAKUDA ‘07 AND HIRO OKAHASHI ‘07 For the Bottom Line Alicia Ogawa is director of the Program on Alternative Investments. Prior to joining CJEB, she was a managing director at Lehman Brothers responsible for the global equity research product. She has nearly 20 years’ experience in equity market research, mostly as a financial services analyst for Salomon Brothers in Tokyo. She was responsible for merging the two research departments of Nikko Securities and Salomon Brothers in the joint venture that became Nikko Citigroup. She holds degrees from Barnard College and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Established by the Center on Japanese Economy and Business, the Program on Alternative Investments analyzes developments in this important field and identifies key implications for business managers, government policymakers and academic researchers. The Program examines the growth and distinctive features of such major nontraditional asset classes as hedge funds, private equity and commercial real estate in Japan and elsewhere in East Asia. In 2007 the Program has held high profile events including "Investors Unleashed: The Rise of Shareholder Activism in Japan” and “KKR in Asia”. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Did you grow up wanting to pursue a career in finance? My career like most people’s was a lot of chance. I think too many people try to plan their lives too much; life is not really like that. One of the things I feel concerned about is people whose existence was well structured by their parents, then at school, then they choose to be the fourth Associate in an investing banking team; it inhibits their abilities to be care takers and to be creative.  My career was completely the opposite. I went to the music school as a pianist, but in my third year I dropped out and went to Barnard College. My first experience of anything in economics was with the placement office that sent me to Japan on a project. I came back, went to SIPA and then joined a commercial bank which later became part of UBS. Japanese banks were our counter parties and I met a Japanese guy and we decided to get married. In the whole topic of coincidence and that you don’t have control in your life, I decided to get married and move to Japan in 1987, which was less than a year after the TSE (Tokyo Stock Exchange) opened membership to foreign investment, and every single investment bank in the whole world entered Japan and was setting up an office. When I went to Japan in August to meet my new in-laws, I was there for 2 weeks, I had six job offers and I wasn’t even looking. Because of my background I covered the financial services sector at Salomon Brothers and the next big advance was the merger with Nikko Securities. Did you enjoy working at this larger organization? I came back to NY in 2000, and the merger of Citibank and Salmon Smith Barney was still very new and it was a big food fight. They didn’t have a strong equities division and people were throwing things at each other (think Liar’s Poker) and all they wanted was to watch who is entering this guy’s office and who is going out from that office. This was horrible, so after a few months I moved to Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers in 2000 was exactly the kind of company that you have to make a decision whether you want to work for or not. Either you are the kind of person who functions well in a big hierarchy with a lot of bureaucracy, where every thing is clearly defined or not. Some people really function well with that, although you can never really shine and your ability to impact the bottom line of the company is zero because it’s a huge platform. I chose the smaller start up feel, where no body knows what kind of job it exactly is and maybe you just take it and run with it. Some people may feel that is very upsetting, so my point is that you really need to make a decision which environment is best for your personality. When I joined Lehman Brothers we were ranked number 12 in equity research and when I left in 2006, we were number one. Do you have any advice to students interested in working at the top private equity firms?  I agree with what Deryck Maughan said. If you are really interested in private equity, which nowadays is 110 of students, if you really want to make a commitment and you are sure that’s what you want to do, go to India, go to China, go to Vietnam, join a domestic company, and learn anything. Then after a few years you will be in a better position to join a KKR. Won’t it be risky to deviate from the typical post-MBA career in consulting or banking? You shouldn’t be afraid to take risk. It was a risk for me to go to Japan; at the time I went I could probably read, but I still had to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning to look up all the Japanese words in the dictionary, but god, it so much fun! A lot more fun than reading and doing research in a department. For some people maybe that’s not the thing to do, but you shouldn’t be afraid to try something extraordinary. My experience in Japan, again was, I can’t believe it happened to me. Because I was in Japan, and one of the few people who was covering banks, I was regularly called to speak to Robert Rubin and other senior officials/executives who I should have had no business talking to. How did you have so much success in a male dominant society?  In Japan, once you are a gaijin (foreigner) all other differences do not matter. But I do think that being a woman was very useful to me as an analyst. When you go to meet a Japanese head of a division, he is typically a very respectful guy, working very hard, and has too much on his mind. He can’t talk to anyone because he sees everybody as a threat to him, so he shouldn’t say what’s wrong, but if you ask him, tell me what’s going wrong in here, and then wow he starts unloading. Then in the second meeting I’ll know about all his kids etc. I found myself much more accepted there. I found that you are much more excluded as a white woman in NY than in Japan. Wall Street still has far to go not only for women but for everybody who is not physically fit, white male, straight and that drives a certain kind of car. Are there benefits to an overseas assignment? I can speak only from my own life experience, but I always encourage people to try to take an assignment. If for whatever reason they cannot move overseas at least try the LA office, or something like that, because you have so much more responsibility; in particular if you are in a developing market, the competition will be much less, your wars are much faster and in addition, if we are talking about emerging markets, which Japan is still an emerging capital market, you deal with big questions such as what should the rights of shareholders be? In NY because there is so much information here that is analyzed by so many people, it is so difficult to add value. I mean you can add value, but it is really to get a 9th footnote or a 10th footnote, but if we are talking about an economy like Russia or China, you can be that person, with issues that are full blown, that are so much more intellectually challenging than what you are confined to in America. Can students get involved with your research? We are looking for people who want to do independent study on topics such as alternative investments, fixed income instruments, real estate and CDOs in Japan and Asia. So I would love to hear from students, what they hear and think are interesting topics. This article first appeared in Columbia Business School's student-led newspaper,The Bottom Line, on February 28, 2007.