How Oaktree's Head of Sourcing Finds the Next Great Deal

Joe Weisenthal (0:03)

Bloomberg Audio Studios.

Tracy Alloway (0:05)

Podcasts, radio, news. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:26)

Joe, do you remember deal toys? Did you ever see those?

Joe Weisenthal (0:29)

I never got a deal, I never, I do know what they exist.

Tracy Alloway (0:33)

Well, you wouldn't get a deal toy unless you were working on something.

Joe Weisenthal (0:35)

So I'm aware that they existed, but I don't, I never had one, I never saw one.

Tracy Alloway (0:40)

I used to be slightly obsessed with them.

Joe Weisenthal (0:42)

So were they toys, like, or were they like, or were they those sort of lucite, lucers?

Tracy Alloway (0:47)

Yeah, that's pretty much it. So if you are working in capital markets or in mergers and acquisitions and you completed a deal, you would mark the end of that transaction by getting some sort of swag, I guess. And it could be really boring, it could just be a lucite block or something like that. But some of them were really interesting and fun. And one of the ones I remember seeing was someone, it must have been working in like capital markets.

It was a little toggle, like an actual, like think of like a railroad kind of toggle. And it was to celebrate the first ever pick toggle transaction.

Joe Weisenthal (1:25)

So can I say something? You know, we talked to, first of all, it's amazing. Second of all, you know, we talked to a lot of investors on the podcast. We talked to a lot of people whose job in some way resembles our job, which is looking at screens all day or maybe looking at data. I think if I ever had gone into finance, I would have some job that involved a lot of looking at screens and a lot of maybe looking at data, but mostly just looking at screens. We don't often talk to a lot of people who are in the world of actually talking to other people about making things happen. I never think I'd be good at that. No one wants to hang out with me, you know, stuff like that. And so I want to learn and talk to more people about how actually things in finance, whether we're talking about a deal, whether we're talking about a new issuance, et cetera, how that actually happens, how an instrument or security actually comes into the world.

Tracy Alloway (2:18)

Well, I am very pleased to say, Joe, that we do in fact have the perfect guest for this topic. We're going to be speaking to someone who's day-to-day business is talking to people, sourcing and finding deals.

Joe Weisenthal (2:28)

Bringing things into the world.

Tracy Alloway (2:29)

And someone who also knows exactly about that pick toggle deal toy that I mentioned earlier. So I'm very excited. We're going to be talking, we're going to try to thread the needle between sourcing deals and also something else we've been interested in lately, which is private credit. All right, so without further adieu, we're speaking with Milwood Hobbs. He leads Oaktree's sourcing and originations group. So really, again, the perfect person. Milwood, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Milwood Hobbs (2:58)

Thank you for having me.

Tracy Alloway (2:59)

So I'm right, right? About the pick-toggle toy. You've seen this toy.

Milwood Hobbs (3:03)

Yes, I've seen it. My favorite deal toys, there's two that stick out. When Ford spun out Hertz in 2005, I was part of that transaction. And so I have a set of car keys, and there's a track from Hertz, and they're called Lucite. And then the other one, which was pretty cool, I did the Mars Wrigley deal with Byron Trot, and so I have two M&M guys that sort of, they lay out the transaction.

Joe Weisenthal (3:30)

Do you have a room in your house that's sort of like, I'm imagining high school athletes with all their trophies, et cetera, do you get them all together?

Milwood Hobbs (3:36)

So, you know, I have, we moved in during COVID in 2020, and we bought a house, and now I have a real library. And in that library, there are two things from investment banking that I have. I have bank books from deals. We used to go to a printer, and we used to draft.

Tracy Alloway (3:53)

Oh, like the pitch deck, kind of?

Milwood Hobbs (3:55)

Well, it's like an actual, it's a glossy picture book of the deal, the transaction. It goes through transaction overview, it goes through company, it goes through business. And that was what folks used to actually underwrite deals back in early 2000