Welcome to the Boardroom Governance Podcast. I’m your host, Evan Epstein. In this episode, I talk with Alison Davis, the Co-Founder and Chair of Blockchain Coinvestors & Fifth Era, a leading VC firm investing in blockchain and Web 3. She currently serves as an independent director at SVB, Fiserv, Janus Henderson Investors, Collibra and Pacaso. She also serves as the Chair of the Advisory Board for Blockchain Capital LLC, advisor to Bitwise Asset Management and board member of the NACD Northern California Chapter. She is a former director of the Royal Bank of Scotland (“RBS”), City National Bank (“CYC”), Diamond Foods (“DMND”), First Data Corporation (“FDC”), Ooma (“OOMA”), Unisys (“UIS”), Xoom (“XOOM”), and many private companies and was the Chair of The LECG (“XPTR”) until its sale in 2011. As an executive, Alison was the CFO of Barclays Global Investors (now BlackRock), the world’s largest institutional investment firm. Earlier in her career, Alison spent 14 years as a strategy consultant and advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs, boards and executive teams with McKinsey & Company, and as a practice leader with Kearney where she built and led the global Financial Services Practice. In this podcast, we talk about her experience with public board service in the U.S. and abroad. We also discuss her focus on fintech and crypto, the role of the board in strategy and innovation, crisis management, the growing influence of institutional investors, ESG and her books focusing on the 'Fifth Era', corporate innovation and blockchain technology. Special thanks to Lisa Spivey from the Northern California Chapter of the NACD for facilitating this connection with Alison. If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing this podcast on social media. You can find all the show notes on the website boardroom-governance.com and please feel free to subscribe to the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at evanepstein.substack.com
0:00 -- Intro.
2:08 -- Start of interview.
2:45 -- Alison's "origin story".
5:07 -- Her experience in management consulting with McKinsey & Co and Kearney.
5:49 -- Her experience as CFO at Barclays Global Investors (now BlackRock) and with private equity as the managing director of Belvedere Capital, focused on investing in US banks and financial services firms. The challenges of banking post-financial crisis and Dodd-Frank (2010).
9:26 -- Her pivot to fintech and blockchain investing. Since 2014 she's been investing in crypto. She co-founded Blockchain Coinvestors with her husband Mathew Le Merle.
11:57 -- Her take on the future of blockchain "I think that it's completely inevitable that fully digital assets and fully digital payments are coming, it's just a matter of time [but timing is everything if you're an investor]." "There is no doubt in my mind that blockchain technology is a massively important component of the next generation of our global digital economy." "We will have fully digitally enabled payment and assets as part of our next generation web [some referred it as Web 3.0]."
13:38 -- On her experience with public company board service. Her first board was in 1998 with Dispatch Management Services Company [Founded in 1994 by Linda Jenkinson and Greg Kidd. DMSC was a publicly traded company that handled point-to-point delivery services]. At the time she was CFO at BGI. Since then, she has served on 22 corporate boards, over half of them public companies, the others in private companies. "It's been fascinating and I really enjoy [this work] enormously."
16:51 -- In 2011 she was invited to join the board of the Royal Bank of Scotland. That was her introduction to U.K. corporate governance. She was on the board for 9 years, because there are term limits in the U.K. [after 9 years, a director is no longer considered 'independent'].
20:25 -- On dual-class share structures adopted in the UK (against the long standing "one share, one vote" principle).
21:24-- On the role of the board in strategy and innovation. "When public companies lose a lot value, 80% of the time it's because of strategy missteps."
25:51 -- How should boards deal with crisis management. "From the crisis that I've experienced as a director, ~40% of them have been due to exogenous factors, and ~60% have been due to self-inflicted wounds (such as bad culture, personality clashes, single person failure, etc)." In the latter case, a lot of them could have been spotted earlier by a really engaged board that was connected enough to the company to understand that these things were arising."
28:21 -- On whether having more inside (executive) directors on boards impacts at all the governance of the company.
29:54 -- On the idea of having employee representatives on corporate boards of directors. "We explored this seriously at RBS, but we decided instead that a sub-committee of the board spend time on 'employee listening sessions' and we created a workers' council to connect on these matters." "I think that U.S. boards could really benefit from more listening sessions with key stakeholders."
32:47 -- On the evolution of sustainability and ESG. Her experience with Barclays Global Investors, and the vision of then CEO Patty Dunn, who questioned the idea of companies having great short term value but leaving a wake of damage that later society and/or tax payers had to pay. She posited having a more active role as stewards of long term capital for a more sustainable future. The case of RBS, going from darlings of Wall Street to almost the world's biggest bank failure. "That was a wake up call." "I am a big fan of ESG broadly defined." "I am really excited that [big institutional investors] have leaned in and are tipping this discussion."
38:58 -- On the growing influence of large institutional investors in corporate governance: "The [beneficiaries of large index funds] do not want short-term high profit at long-term costs to the economy and people's lives." "I'm very supportive of large institutional investors focusing on broader societal issues and the health of capitalism." "Can capitalism retain the trust of the people that live in a capitalist system?" "I mean, you could democratize the whole thing and say everyone has a vote but your average person is not investing the time to get really educated on these issues."
41:35 -- On the books that she's co-authored with her husband Matthew Le Merle:
44:55 -- No specific books "that have changed her life", but she's a big reader of The Economist.
45:42 -- Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them?
47:26 -- Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?
From Desiderata (1927): "With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."
48:32 -- An unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love: "Making jam with my husband, we make a killer Lemoncello and apricot jam"!
49:14 -- The person(s) she most admires: entrepreneurs from the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center (she's a board member of this organization).
Alison Davis the Co-Founder and Chair of Blockchain Coinvestors & Fifth Era, a leading VC firm investing in blockchain and Web 3. She currently serves as an independent director at Silicon Valley Bank, Fiserv, Janus Henderson Investors, Collibra and Pacaso. She also serves as the Chair of the Advisory Board for Blockchain Capital LLC, advisor to Bitwise Asset Management and board member of the NACD Northern California Chapter.
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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License