Becca and I joined some friends last week to see David Byrne’s American Utopia. While I was familiar with David Byrne, I was pleasantly shocked by how wonderful the show was. I previously thought that his voice was special, but mostly just idiosyncratic; In fact, his voice is remarkable. I expected his message to be eccentric; Rather, I found his discussion about society, including concerns about voter turnout, social justice, and outsized influence of technology and media, resonated.
Oh. And the music was ridiculously good. The artistry of the stage design and world class musicians contrasted with their bare feet and dancing were uniquely harmonious. The percussion was unbelievable. We loved the show. I hope to see him again.
If you live in NYC, I strongly recommend you check out this show.
We also spent some time at the MoMA as a nice precursor to the David Byrne show. I always enjoy this museum. In one room, you enjoy familiar images of lifelong artists like Picasso, Matisse, and Van Gogh; In the next room, you come across artists that never trained and took up painting in their 50’s or 60’s after an otherwise blue collar career. I feel like the museum itself is a form of modern artwork, and the experience includes seemingly intentional connections emphasizing the benefactors of MoMA, acknowledgements of benefactors of featured artists, and the back story of many artists, who were influenced by their families and local societal trends. I’m glad its wonderful, as any expenditure in the range of $450 million should result in something awesome!
One piece I was struck by was the tombstone associated with this painting by Ernst Kirchner. “The more I mixed with people the more I felt my loneliness.” Yea. Maybe research like this simply validates ideas that artists like Kirchner have understood… forever.
We returned home early on Sunday. I am making progress on a few projects I am working on. As we were driving home, I found myself curious about how different insurance brokers have performed in public markets and how they compare to (publicly disclosed by parent KKR each quarter) private USI Insurance Services. Here is what I found through Q3 2021 based on a trailing 7 quarters of data. I included dividends in the analysis (imperfectly, as a purchase of stock price at the most recently ended quarter.)
Here is the table I generated to create this chart. Hopefully I did it correctly! I also added a note at the bottom to compare Debt to Capital ratios. (KKR doesn’t disclose this for USI!)
| Date | USI | AJG | Marsh | Aon | Willis | Brown and Brown |
| Dec 31, 2019 | $ 800,168 | $ 800,168 | $ 800,168 | $ 800,168 | $ 800,168 | $ 800,168 |
| Mar 31, 2020 | $ 800,168 | $ 688,499 | $ 624,240 | $ 637,026 | $ 678,415 | $ 737,089 |
| Jun 30, 2020 | $ 831,492 | $ 827,280 | $ 778,495 | $ 747,024 | $ 792,185 | $ 833,325 |
| Sep 30, 2020 | $ 884,610 | $ 899,749 | $ 834,977 | $ 803,607 | $ 845,498 | $ 928,937 |
| Dec 31, 2020 | $ 884,634 | $ 1,058,087 | $ 855,106 | $ 826,715 | $ 858,870 | $ 976,834 |
| Mar 31, 2021 | $ 987,753 | $ 1,071,002 | $ 893,585 | $ 904,285 | $ 938,841 | $ 945,757 |
| Jun 30, 2021 | $ 975,160 | $ 1,206,540 | $ 1,035,510 | $ 942,297 | $ 949,029 | $ 1,103,227 |
| Sep 30, 2021 | $ 1,094,058 | $ 1,284,490 | $ 1,118,576 | $ 1,132,049 | $ 965,813 | $ 1,155,149 |
| Return | 1.3673 | 1.6053 | 1.3979 | 1.4148 | 1.2070 | 1.4436 |
| Days | 639d | 639d | 639d | 639d | 639d | 639d |
| Days / Year | 365d | 365d | 365d | 365d | 365d | 365d |
| Years | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 |
| IRR | 19.56% | 31.04% | 21.09% | 21.92% | 11.35% | 23.33% |
| Debt to Capital* | Not Public | 0.4366 | 0.5398 | 0.7834 | 0.3182 | 0.3246 |
| *sourced from Fidelity |
From a business perspective, I wonder how we can give our creative minds more exercise; Our imagination must be the direct link between our creative minds and our ability to effectively plan for business priorities.
I was thinking about this earlier and came across this article about art and entrepreneurship by Sophia Matveeva.
“Sometimes, art for art’s sake is good for business.” Indeed.