Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg - Delivering Alpha: Lessons from 30 Years of Outperforming Investment Benchmarks

Ochoa-Brillembourgs 30-year record140 basis points above a portfolio of benchmarks, with 75 percent of rolling three-year periods yielding above-market returnscreates all the credibility necessary to make her book a primer for every serious investor. However, the real greatness of Delivering Alpha is how Ochoa-Brillembourg helps investors navigate the 25 percent of rolling three-year periods when they feel like failures. There is no worse professional pain than underperforming your benchmarks. For Ochoa-Brillembourg this is where that battle for superior performance is won with philosophical vision and disciplined organization.

PETER ACKERMAN, former head of special projects in the high yield and convertible bond department and head of international capital markets, Drexel Burnham Lambert

What a marvelous book! Smart, informative, intelligently wrought, and beautifully written. Ive been in management for my entire career, running offices and divisions for two New York publishers as well as the Washington Post and the Library of Congress, and I have never read as engaging and illuminating a business book as Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourgs Delivering Alpha. Punctuated throughout with entertaining asides, from Albert Einstein to Oscar Wildeas well as lessons from her personal experiencesthis is a primer for anyone who wishes to understand leadership practices, investment markets, the building of prosperity, the economy as a whole, and the human component that underlies all these.

MARIE ARANA, prizewinning author, most recently of Bolivar: American Liberator, and literary director, Library of Congress

Those of us who know her from her Venezuelan Quinceaera years know her as Maanita: an unusually thoughtful girl. Now Hilda has become an unusually thoughtful and experienced portfolio manager, gifting us an unusually charming and expert account of what it takes to add value to life and portfolios alike. She teaches us its more important over the long run to master the right piata culture than to take home the most candies. A great lesson for the UN Security Council members. An admirable life and book.

AMBASSADOR DIEGO ARRIA of Venezuela, former president of the UN Security Council

In the sea of life, while many drift with the current, a brilliant few become the force of waves that crash the status quo and carry us forward. Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg is one such force. Delivering Alpha captures the energy that imagined, developed, and nurtured an entity marked by integrity, innovation, and excellence in the pursuit of alpha. No matter ones investment acuity, readers will appreciate the illumination of ideas and the manifold skills needed to amplify that genius into practical and positive results.

CAROL GREFENSTETTE BATES, cofounder and former managing director, Strategic Investment Group

I never see this. Ever. As if penning the last letter to her heirs, one of the great minds in global investing sets out everything she has learned in 40 years. Strategy, tactics, rules of thumb, avoidable mistakes, and the talent, psychology, and governance of great investment cultures. Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg writes for experts and professionals. But there is enough here to make anyone, in the words of the English proverb, healthy, wealthy, and wise.

DAVID G. BRADLEY, chairman, Atlantic Media Group

Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg has written a compelling insiders tour through professional, sophisticated investing. With wisdom, clarity, and the charming relief of personal storiesfrom childhood piata theory to boardroom strategyshe unpacks how the best investors achieve strong, stable returns over time. Delivering Alpha allows all of us to learn from the very best.

KATHERINE BRADLEY, founding chairman, CityBridge Education

It is widely acknowledged that good governance is critical to an organizations long-term success. Actually implementing such governance, however, is another matter entirely. In Delivering Alpha, Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg expertly demonstrates not only why good governance matters, but also what it looks like and how it can be achieved. Any manager wishing to secure a strong and stable future for his or her organization will benefit from reading this book and absorbing Ochoa-Brillembourgs wisdom.

ARTHUR C. BROOKS, president, American Enterprise Institute

The concepts and practices Hilda describes here were developed by bringing to the task of portfolio management the best analytical resources and experience-born judgment and insight we could find. It was exciting to be pioneering a new service model for large asset pools, and particularly satisfying to be doing so among respected, creative colleagues and friends. The only thing better than reading about it in this wonderful book was living it. Hilda offers the reader the opportunity to do both.

MARY CHOKSI, cofounder and former managing director, Strategic Investment Group

Hilda Ochoa is one of the great investors of the last 30 years, and her book Delivering Alpha is a one-of-a-kind insightful journey into the facts, processes, and principles of delivering sustainable value-added in investing. And its a pleasure to read.

RAY DALIO, founder, co-CEO, and cochairman of Bridgewater Associates and author of the New York Times number one bestseller Principles

Delivering Alpha, like its author, Hilda, is a fountain of knowledge and wisdom. This book is a guide for institutional fiduciaries on how to create alpha over a generation time frame. Hildas experience highlights how to combine the science of finance with pragmatic solutions to governance challenges that face institutional investors and how a culture of innovation renews the investment tools as well as renewing the governance relationships. The best reward is the enhanced wealth creation to the ultimate beneficiaries of our joint efforts.

MICHAEL DUFFY, cofounder and former managing director, Strategic Investment Group

A one-of-a-kind book. Light on theory and serious on practice, Delivering Alpha is for any finance professional who wants to know how to add sustainable value to globally diversified institutional portfolios beyond whats learned in textbooks.

RICARDO ERNST, Baratta Chair in Global Business, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University

Over three decades, the ex-World Bank investment team led by Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg has outperformed the market benchmark without generating any additional volatility. This well-constructed book lays out the thinking that underpinned this achievement. A mind-clearing and often mind-stretching read for investors.

SEBASTIAN MALLABY, the Paul Volcker Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite and The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan

Alpha is the holy grail of investment management. It is rare, difficult, elusive, and enormously valuable. Hilda is one of the very few managers who have delivered alpha consistently over a long period of time. Pay attention...

JACK MEYER, former president and CEO of the Harvard Management Company and founder CEO of Convexity Capital Management

Hildas book reflects both her investment acumen and creative instincts, which she translated into an enduring enterprise that continues to thrive years after her departure. As the investment environment evolves, the principles of analytical rigor, disciplined governance, innovation, and collaboration espoused in Hildas book are her lasting legacy that guides us in the continuing pursuit of alpha for all of our clients.