The real Alex Waislitz
The longstanding myths spun by Thorney's 'founder' are falling away.
It's become an uncontroversial tenet of investment wisdom that fund managers can lose the plot, and that their slackening grip on reality can first be detected in their own words.
The exemplar in recent years was Hamish Douglass insisting in December 2021 that "I haven't found an institutional investor who has questioned the performance over the last 12 months" after 12 months in which all anyone in the market talked about was Magellan's acute underperformance. Thirteen days later, Magellan's largest fund client redeemed its $23 billion mandate and within weeks, Douglass was on medical leave, never to return.
Elsewhere, the fantasia of small cap fund manager Alex Waislitz has been apparent from the outset. Since marrying into the billionaire Pratt family 30 years ago, he has desperately sought to mischaracterise his inherited wealth as self-made. The funniest part is that Melbourne society so willingly nodded along to his fable. They were all just thrilled to attend his soirees, where Waislitz made a spectacle of lavishing BMWs and speedboats on his favoured investment counterparties.[[There's no doubt that Waislitz learned the power of client entertainment and grand gestures from his then father-in-law.]] His business model relied upon him being the Tony Barber of Australian funds management.