'Thanksgiving' is a season for giving thanks for the blessings received during the year. So Shasha Dai of WSJ decided to ask private equity professionals what they were most grateful for this year and shared their answers.
Some answers were what one would normally hear in the dinner Thanksgiving table, Dai wrote. Jesse Rogers, the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Altamont Capital Partners, wrote in an email that he was thankful he has a job doing what enjoys. Monroe Capital President and Chief Executive Ted Koenig also emailed his response. He said he was grateful for getting to know all the really wonderful people in the private equity industry through the years.
The other responses had to do directly with private equity, like the one given by the Managing Director and Head of Global Private Equity Research at Cambridge Associates. In an email, Andrea Auerbach wrote, "I am grateful that distributions to investors continue to crest, with 2013 likely to reach record levels, allowing [limited partners] to move forward with their mandates, missions, and programs." Auerbach further said she was also grateful to general partners since they made those distributions possible, especially those who are trying to create a better "return-generating mousetrap."
Other private equity professionals decided to put humor in their answers. Dai wrote that the most comical answer came from Olympus Partners Managing Partner Rob Morris. When asked what he was most thankful for, his emailed response was, "We are thankful we raised our new fund in dollars, not in Bitcoin."
According to a Business Insider report, Thanksgiving has been celebrated in the US since 1941 when the House passed a joint resolution that declared the last Thursday of November be the legal day for the celebration. Since there are years when November has five Thursdays, Senate amended the bill so that the word "last" was changed to "fourth."
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