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Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

3.2K followers 1.1K following 710 posts

Freelance journalist. Bylines: FT, NYT, NPR, etc. Past lives: Pitchfork, SPIN, BusinessWeek. marchogan at gmail dot com. He/him. Iowa since 2009, but ex–NY, IL, MA, AZ, TN; CA native. https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-hogan-00b34b1a photo by Erol Reyal

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Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

For The Allocator newsletter from With Intelligence, I talked to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's first-ever chief investment officer, Jack Mahler, about what he's excited to do after he retires at the end of the year. Subscription information: pardot.withintelligence.com/e/284832/l-2...

Jack Mahler: Over & Out

When Jack Mahler retires at the end of the year, after nearly a decade as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s first chief investment officer, he’s looking forward to adding some frequent flier miles.

“We’re headed to Chile, actually,” the $4.7bn allocator’s CIO since 2016 told The Allocator in an interview. “Patagonia.” 

Mahler and his wife, Marla, have been trying to travel with some friends for the last five years but never have been able to get their schedules aligned. This year, they’re planning to take three weeks to go and check out “the amazing natural beauty,” Mahler said.
 
Along with travel, he’s also looking forward to spending time with the couple’s grandchildren. 

“They’re really, really important to us,” he said. “We’ve stayed on a pace of trying to see them every other month, but it’s not always easy.” 

Retirement, he expects, will help. But slowing down may not be easy.  Before joining the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Mahler was the head of equities and alternatives at OMERS for seven years. Unusually for an allocator, Mahler is an MD, and worked in clinical research at Cornell University Medical College before heading to Columbia University Business School with plans of becoming a physical executive.

Finance, fueled by a mission, won him over. With Mahler as CIO, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation noted in a press release, the nonprofit built a diversified portfolio and pursued a “venture philanthropy” approach to power cystic fibrosis treatments.

He’s succeeded at the Bethesda, Md.-based foundation by Adela Skenderasi, who was most recently partner and senior member of the OCIO investment team at Brown Advisory. Previously, she held investment roles at the International Monetary Fund and Georgetown University. It’s a CV that suggests the foundation could be well positioned for its next chapter. 

As for Mahler, beyond sightseeing and family, there are other aspects of what he called “the next phase of life” that he’s still mulling. A retired friend recently advised him not to do anything in the first year, such as serving on boards, but Mahler doesn’t know that he’ll follow the recommendation.     

“His point is, you know, it clears your mind and then you can really decide what you want to do rather than just naturally continue what you’ve been doing, or a version of it,” he said. “So we’ll see how good I am at that. I don’t know yet. 

“It’s hard to step back and just focus on your life and not think about giving back to the community in some way, shape, or form.” 

—Marc Hogan

November 12, 2025 at 3:01 AM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

👀 had a feeling about this a year ago: www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/a...

“Monster Mash,” Bobby Pickett’s enduring Halloween anthem from 1962, has returned to the Billboard Hot 100 the last three years ahead of the holiday. And Billboard estimated last year that the hit could generate $1 million in annual combined revenue.

Rell Lafargue, the president of Reservoir, which owns Pickett’s publishing share, said money from the song has roughly tripled from 2019 to 2023. He also cited licensing opportunities, including greeting cards, wreaths and plush toys. There’s even a planned “Monster Mash” stage musical, aimed at a 2025 debut, and the song may figure into future movies and TV shows.

October 29, 2025 at 12:37 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

Wrote about the battle over the Ohio teacher pension board, for The Allocator newsletter. Subscription information is here: www.withintelligence.com/investors-re...

Showdown at Ohio Teachers’

An Ohio judge has blocked state officials’ plans to shake up the board of the $102.5B State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio.

Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Carl Aveni on October 15 granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit by teacher groups challenging the changes as unconstitutional and discriminatory.

For decades, according to the ruling, the 11-member Ohio STRS board has consisted of seven elected teachers—five active, two retired—and four state appointees.

A provision in an Ohio budget bill signed in June by Republican Governor Mike DeWine aimed to flip the board’s makeup. Under the new law, teachers and retirees would have three elected seats by 2028. The remaining eight board members would be appointed by the governor, state treasurer, and legislative leaders.

Members of the Ohio Education Association, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, and the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors sued the Ohio STRS board last month challenging the budget provision.

Another state court judge blocked the planned overhaul on an interim basis in September. But the preliminary injunction would last until the case is decided.

Another state court judge blocked the planned overhaul on an interim basis in September. But the preliminary injunction would last until the case is decided.

The teachers “are likely to prevail upon the merits in their constitutional challenge,” Judge Aveni wrote in a 24-page opinion. He called the board provision “wrongly grafted onto the otherwise wholly separate single-subject appropriations bill” and found that the measure wasn’t considered on “three separate days” as required.

Spokespeople for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who represents the defendants, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Yost sued last year to remove two members from the board; the case is ongoing, state court records show.

Ohio STRS in April named Aaron DiCenzo, the system’s head of alternatives since 2021, as interim CIO. DiCenzo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, either.

The teacher groups applauded the court’s injunction. “This is an unconstitutional power grab by the legislature,” said OEA President Jeff Wensing, OFT President Melissa Cropper, and OC AAUP Executive Director Sara Kilpatrick in a joint statement. “Educators, just like all other public employees in Ohio, deserve a meaningful voice in our pension plan.”
DiCenzo succeeded Matthew Worley, who retired in March after 31 years with Ohio STRS.

The allocator’s boardroom overseers, too, have seen their share of turnover recently, with a pair of board members resigning last year amid more drama than can be detailed here.

The board’s composition structure, at least, remains in place for now.

—Marc Hogan

October 25, 2025 at 2:35 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

A lot of people enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in Des Moines yesterday. Couldn’t find where they allegedly got their paychecks.

The Iowa Capitol building during the No Kings rally

October 19, 2025 at 2:39 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

As a constituent, I emailed Chuck Grassley about Trump telling military leaders that troops should use Democratic-run cities as "training grounds" to fight the "enemy within." Here's his reply. Oddly enough, he used to worry about Posse Comitatus... in 1997: www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-re...

October 16, 2025

Dear Marc:

Thank you for taking the time to contact me. As your senator, it is important for me to hear about the issues that concern you.

I appreciate hearing your concerns regarding the potential use of military troops through the Insurrection Act in responding to protests. The Insurrection Act has been law since 1807 and states “Whenever the President considers unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws … in any State … he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

The Insurrection Act has been invoked a dozen times in U.S. history. Examples include President Eisenhower’s decision in 1957 to enforce the desegregation of Central Little Rock High School in Little Rock, Arkansas following Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act in 1992 during the Los Angeles Riots and federalized the California National Guard to stop the rioting.

There are statutory protections in place to prevent abusive domestic use of military forces. The Posse Comitatus Act, which was passed in 1878, outlaws the willful use of any part of the Armed Forces to execute the law unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress. Existing case law also states that "execution of the law" in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act occurs (a) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to an organ of civil government, or (b) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to them solely for purposes of civilian government. The Act is not violated when the Armed Forces conduct activities for a military purpose such as training exercises.

Should the Senate consider legislation concerning the Posse Comitatus Act, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.

Again, thank…

October 17, 2025 at 3:40 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

A Michigan pension fund is suing a Swiss firm and its two principals over $52.7 million they allegedly poured into a failing investment to salvage their own personal stakes. My latest for The Allocator. Subscription info: pardot.withintelligence.com/e/284832/l-2...

Polmann and Arnaboldi began providing investment advisory services for MERS more than a decade ago, when they were with a previous firm. When they left to found Verdantf in 2015, MERS hired them as part of a strategy to identify emerging real asset managers, the suit says.

In March 2016, MERS and Verdantf entered into an investment management agreement providing Verdantf with “full fiduciary responsibility” over a $150m pool, court documents show.

Soon after finalizing the agreement, Verdantf started investing MERS’ assets in a series of alternative energy companies called Concord Blue, the suit asserts.

Verdantf invested a total of $56,555,079 of MERS’ assets in the Concord Blue ventures, from which MERS received only a dividend of $3,845,064 in 2016, per the allegations.

However, the suit alleges that Verdantf, Polmann, and Arnaboldi consistently misrepresented the health of the Concord Blue investments and failed to disclose material facts, such as Lockheed Martin’s June 2021 termination of a contract with a pair of Concord Blue entities.

MERS terminated the investment management agreement with Verdantf in 2023, court documents show.

The allocator hasn’t recovered any portion of the net $52,710,015 of its assets that Verdantf invested in Concord Blue entities, the suit claims. Because of the defendants’ actions, the complaint further maintains, MERS is unlikely to receive any material recovery on the investments.

The suit alleges fraud, negligent misrepresentation, bad faith, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, and violations of securities laws.

MERS is seeking an unspecified monetary award, plus a judgment rescinding the investment management agreement, according to the suit.

“As fiduciary for the retirement plans of Michigan’s public servants, we are committed to holding our investment managers to the highest standards of integrity and ensuring they act in the best interest of our participants,” a MERS spokesperson told The Allocator in an emailed statement.

Summarizing the publicly filed allegations, the spokesperson continued: “Verdantf and its principals acted dishonestly, managed investments poorly, broke their promises, and failed to follow the law. As a result, MERS has asked the court to hold them accountable on behalf of Michigan’s hardworking public employees.”

On October 2, Verdantf and Polmann filed a motion asking the court to seal the original complaint and certain of its (hundreds of pages of) accompanying exhibits, citing “a risk of significant business and reputational harm” to non-party entities named in them.

The next day, U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney granted the request.

The suit, and the Concord Blue entities’ alleged involvement, were also reported by Law.com.

—Marc Hogan

October 10, 2025 at 2:26 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

Wrote about a billionaire giving away money to help fight cancer, for With Intelligence's The Allocator newsletter. Local angle: The target audience (investment pros at institutions such as pension funds, foundations, and university endowments) could spy a job opportunity.

Just Do It (Polish Up Your CV)
A multi-billion-dollar asset allocator role could be opening up before too long in the Pacific Northwest.

Oregon Health & Science University recently announced a $2B gift from Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, to the Portland-based academic health system’s cancer institute.

OHSU receives backing from the $1.5B OHSU Foundation, overseen by a volunteer board of trustees drawn from the local business and civic community.
That said, with the Knights’ massive commitment, the cancer institute will become self-governed within OHSU, according to the announcement. A newly created Knight Cancer Group, with its own board of directors, will lead the institute.

Asked who would be running the new influx of money, an OHSU spokesperson didn’t immediately rule out the possibility of hiring a new CIO (or OCIO, for that matter).

“There is a lot to put in place, and this will be determined through the planning process underway now,” the spokesperson said, in an email to The Allocator. “The structure of KCG, including its board, will be decided within the next few months.”

The time frame for the gift hitting OHSU’s coffers will be a bit longer: 10 years, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting, which reported on a gathering to announce the donation.

KCG’s inaugural president will be Dr. Brian Druker, the cancer institute’s chairman of leukemia research.

OHSU named its cancer institute after the Knights upon receiving a $100 million gift from them in 2008. The Oregon couple gave another $500 million to OHSU in 2013 on the condition (successfully met) that it be matched dollar for dollar within two years.

OHSU said the Knight’s latest largesse was the largest single donation ever made to a U.S. university, college, or academic health center. Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and former New York City mayor, committed $1.8B to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, in 2018.

To be sure, a potential job allocating assets for the newly formed KCG wouldn’t be all Nike swooshes and cancer cures.

Like other institutions of higher learning, OHSU has been grappling with the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to funding given out by the National Institutes, including for cancer research. Trump has also terminated hundreds of NIH grants.

OHSU was confronting financial woes even before the change in the White House, with operating losses, layoffs, and a credit rating downgrade.
Dr. Druker said of the Knights’ $2B gift, as quoted by Oregon Public Broadcasting, “We’re just so grateful, not only for the generosity, but also the timing.”

For the right allocator with itchy feet, the sentiment might be the same.

—Marc Hogan

September 29, 2025 at 1:23 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

In private credit, the contract *is* the market, according to a fascinating new paper by NYU Stern's Elham Saeidinezhad. Talked to her and wrote excitably about it for With Intelligence's The Allocator newsletter. The research is here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The Contract Is the Market
In private credit, yield and liquidity are deliberately engineered through contractual design rather than discovered through trading activity, according to academic paper “The Covenant Structure of Yield in Private Credit: A Contractually Defined Valuation Model.”

Armed with this knowledge, the paper contends, LPs can take advantage of the legal provisions of private credit covenants to help achieve their investment goals.

“These covenants may sound like some boring contractual feature,” said Elham Saeidinezhad, an economics professor at NYU Stern, in an interview with The Allocator. “One big takeaway from this whole paper for the LPs would be, ‘Look, you guys can use these covenants for your benefit.’”

The research was initially prompted by the market debut earlier this year of the first exchange-traded fund focused on private credit, Saeidinezhad said. The State Street Global Advisors ETF, developed with Apollo Global Management, raised liquidity concerns among regulators and investors.

The prevailing frameworks for valuing private credit are still drawn from private equity and, before that, public markets, according to the paper. These valuation methods fail to grapple with how liquidity works in an asset class of bespoke, illiquid instruments, the study argues.

“Private credit is not merely illiquid,” Saeidinezhad writes. “It is non-fungible. Each instrument is uniquely structured to fit the risk, timing, and control preferences of both borrower and lender, and cannot be priced or traded as a substitute.”

The central driver of value in private credit, she argues, is what the paper calls—in what seems to be a novel and potentially useful coinage— “contractually defined liquidity.”

To account for contractually defined liquidity, Saeidinezhad proposes a fresh valuation approach, which she terms the “covenant structure approach.”

This covenant structure approach to valuing private credit is based on a three-layered hierarchy.

At the top of the hierarchy are the covenants that govern exit pathways, or what the paper calls “exit engineering”: clauses such as NAV-based resets, take-out provisions, change-of-control triggers, and cash flow sweeps.

Next are the covenants that determine the potential for options, or the “optionality structuring”: clauses such as call protections, equity kickers, prepayment penalties, and ratchets.

At the base of the hierarchy is “cash flow pacing,” or the covenants deciding the timing and cadence of payments: instruments such as payment-in-kind toggles, amortization schedules, deferred interest provisions, and step-up/down coupons structure.

“It’s like a cooking instruction,” Saeidinezhad said of her framework for valuing private credit based on covenant structure. “Five steps to create apple pie, or something like that.”

Within private credit, this valuation framework probably applies best outside of the infrastructure space, Saeidinezhad acknowledged. “You are building a railroad,” she said. “The price of the railroad is probably more important than the covenant structure of the private credit.”
Allocators who read the full paper may also enjoy Saeidinezhad’s insights about commitment pacing.

On this she was inspired by the work of Thomas Meyer, an author of private investment books who has argued that, through commitment pacing, LPs can transform illiquidity from a problem to be managed into a parameter to be designed. “Meyer is my prophet here,” Saeidinezhad said.

The same logic applies at the deal or transaction level, the paper argues, looking at the example of a hypothetical university endowment that allocates $100m across four vintage-staggered private credit funds. Covenants such as cash sweep clauses or PIK toggles “are not passive legal features,” Saeidinezhad writes. Rather, they’re instruments that allocators can actively design.

Saeidinezhad said she is working on a new paper about another concept that appears to have been freshly named wi…

Here, that’s defined as “the return earned for accepting exposure that is gated, time-locked, and path-dependent by design.”
Unlike the equity risk premium, which is determined by markets, the commitment premium is designed in advance through covenants.
The current paper’s closing paragraph, which for this writer calls to mind media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum that “the medium is the message,” seems worth quoting in full:

“In sum, this paper reconceives valuation in private credit as a problem of legal engineering. Yield is not revealed—it is authored. Where liquidity is not provided by market infrastructure, it must be constructed through covenant logic. In this setting, the contract is not just a record of terms—it is the valuation engine itself. In private credit, the contract is the market.”

No wonder it took so long for someone to set up a private credit ETF.

—Marc Hogan

September 25, 2025 at 2:00 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

The Texas employee pension system has beaten a workplace discrimination lawsuit, for now. Wrote about it for The Allocator newsletter from With Intelligence. Subscription info: pardot.pageantmedia.com/register-the...

Texas Pension Wins This Round
Texas’s $42B employees’ pension system (ERS) has defeated, for now, a former investment employee’s lawsuit accusing it of racism and ageism.

The alleged behavior in the case centered around an ill-timed investment in the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, the California regional bank that imploded in March 2023.

Reached by The Allocator, a spokesperson for the Employees Retirement System of Texas declined to comment on the suit.

Texas ERS hired Carlos Chujoy in April 2009 as a portfolio manager, according to a complaint filed last year in federal district court in Austin. Chujoy identifies as Asian, and he’s more than 40 years old, the complaint says. He reached director level with a base salary of close to $220,000.

Despite favorable performance reviews, and allegedly without sharing a reason, Texas ERS CIO David Veal demoted Chujoy in August 2022, the lawsuit asserts. Chujoy’s former subordinate in the allocator’s investments division, John McCaffrey — now a managing director — became his direct supervisor.

Around the same time, Veal allegedly removed Chujoy as a voting member of the Texas ERS risk committee and dismantled the risk management and applied research group he led. Through administrative staff, Veal also instructed Chujoy to vacate his office and move into a group office, the suit says.

Matters allegedly came to a head several months later.

Veal and McCaffrey sent a reprimand letter in March 2023 citing performance deficiencies relating to the realized loss from one of the fund’s SVB investments, per the complaint.

Texas ERS made its bet on the stock at the recommendation of external equity investment advisor Brandywine Global, according to the court filing. Trade records show the allocator’s Brandywine-advised portfolio bought $2.8M in SVB stock on March 9, 2023, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal that’s cited in the suit. Regulators shut the bank down the next day.

The suit contends that “i…

Chujoy filed the suit against Texas ERS in May 2024, claiming that Veal and McCaffrey — who are not named as parties in the case — falsely blamed him for the SVB loss due to his race and age.

Texas ERS denied any wrongdoing and asked the court to throw out the whole suit. Courts largely agreed with the organization earlier this month. In a ruling on September 3, U.S. Senior District Judge David Ezra handed the system a legal victory, tossing all of Chujoy’s claims.

Ezra permanently dismissed two of the suit’s claims, for age-based discrimination and for race-based discrimination in a contractual relationship. In a 21-page order, the judge pointed to the legal doctrine called sovereign immunity, which prevents government entities from being sued.

As for a third claim for race-based discrimination, Ezra held that Chujoy had not “made sufficient factual allegations” that he was forced to quit or that it was due to his race. “The office reassignment, although perhaps executed unceremoniously, does not arise to the level of requisite humiliation or harassment,” Ezra wrote.

The judge granted Chujoy until October 3 to amend the claim.

John Melton, a lawyer representing Chujoy, told The Allocator in an email that he intends to do just that. He declined to comment further.

—Marc Hogan

September 22, 2025 at 2:05 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

Wrote about a legal dispute involving a Texas oil heiress, for The Allocator newsletter. Subscription info is here: pardot.pageantmedia.com/l/284832/202...

The Scoop
Oil Money
A Texas oil heiress is suing her former family office CIO for allegedly failing to repay more than $15M in personal loans.

Jean Christine Thompson and Thompson Petroleum Corp. filed the lawsuit on August 19 in Texas state court. Christy Thompson is the daughter of the late Texas oil mogul James Cleo Thompson Jr., who started Thompson Petroleum with his father in the 1950s, according to a 2022 report in Forbes. The same report describes her as the sole head of a billion-dollar family office and “real estate empire.”

Thompson is also the principal and owner of Thompson Petroleum.

The defendants in the suit are Michael Mann — Thompson Petroleum’s short-tenured CIO, according to the complaint — and the Dallas-based venture capital firm he founded, Anchor Capital GP.

Thompson met Mann in early 2022. A mutual friend — also a partner at Anchor — introduced them in early 2022. Thompson ended up investing more than $40M with Anchor Capital funds managed by Mann, Anchor GP, or both, according to the suit. Mann approached Thompson for a personal loan in September 2024, purporting to need the money to buy out one of his partners, the complaint asserts. He allegedly persuaded her by agreeing to guarantee the debt personally — representing that he had more than $24M in net assets — and by putting up Anchor GP’s assets, supposedly more than $19M, as collateral.

Thompson agreed to lend Mann more money in January to buy out another partner, per the suit. Also in January, Thompson Petroleum hired Mann as CIO.

Mann’s allegedly “lucrative” employment agreement — effective January 1 — required him to secure Thompson’s written pre-approval before committing the company to any new alternative investments, according to the suit.

However, starting the same month, Mann committed Thompson Petroleum to at least five alternative investments without Mann’s knowledge or consent, the suit contends. These investments were “ill-advised” and “for Mann’s personal benefit,” per the court filing. When confronted with his alleged violations of the employment contract, Mann “flew into a rage and began insulting the company, both verbally and in writing, to other employees,” the complaint states, referring to “various rants.”

Thompson Petroleum terminated Mann’s employment “for cause” on Feb. 28, per the suit. Thompson, through her lawyer, started requesting information about the state of her investments with Anchor Capital — and of the purported loan collateral.

In May, Thompson asked Mann in writing for updated financial statements as well as access to Anchor GP’s books, according to the complaint. While Mann failed to comply with the requests, one document he did provide was a June 1 personal financial statement — and it contained “massive” discrepancies from the January 2024 statement he’d provided for the loans, the suit claims.

“Missing from his June 2025 personal financial statement, for example, were millions in real estate, jewelry, cash, and other assets he had claimed he owned in his January statement,” the complaint states.

In June and July, Thompson’s lawyer sent new demand letters and notified Mann that Thompson had decided to accelerate the debt, with an accelerated due date of August 18, 2025. To date, he has failed to pay or to produce his and Anchor GP’s books and records, according to the filing.

Thompson is seeking the nearly $15.1M loan principal, plus interest, attorneys’ fees, damages, and costs, the court document says, relating to Mann’s alleged violations of the employment agreement, including “fraud,” “self-dealing,” and “engaging in hostile and offensive behavior toward colleagues.” “Over a three-year period, Mann wheedled his way into Thompson’s good graces, and her busines…

Mann hasn’t formally replied to the complaint as of press time, court records show, and he didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Attorneys for Thompson also didn’t return a request for comment.

September 11, 2025 at 2:30 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

Loved this @larryfitzmaurice.bsky.social interview with Jens Lekman, especially having finally met Joel from Air France for the first time last year. Jens Mpls tickets secured! last-donut-of-the-night.ghost.io/jens-lekman-...

I remember an old interview with Yung Lean when he was probably in his late teens, and he was talking about how all the the rappers in Sweden were dissing him and he was like, "I never listened to Swedish rap—I listened to Air France." Just to hear that connection being established and realizing, "Yeah, this was actually the logical conclusion of this." You had these record labels like Service and Sincerely Yours, and what they were moving towards was definitely something
like Yung Lean—you just needed a 16-year-old who was really into making that kind of music. I love it. I think they're great, and they are very connected to the remnants of that scene as well. I mean, Year0001 consists of a lot of people from that scene, for example.

September 11, 2025 at 2:26 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

August 12, 2004 lol

Lastly, you might be wondering whether you get paid for this gig. The
painful truth is that, despite our ever-expanding readership, we're
still awfully broke. Fortunately, I've just hired a new advertising
director who thus far has proven very capable of turning that around.
I'm optimistic that, by the end of the year, our standing will be much
better, and we'll be able to offer better pay. For now, it's $10 per
review, $20 per feature, and $3 for each We Are The World piece you
write (or $10 for every three).

The big catch here is that you have to write for us for six months
before this takes effect, and when it does, it only counts for reviews
you write AFTER that initial six-month period has ended. The reasons
for this are manyfold: 1) I have to do paperwork for taxes at the end of
the year, and since most of the people we lose fall off in the first six
months, that's a bunch less W-2's I have to fill out; 2) It's mainly a
perk to reward our dedicatos and loyalitos; 3) As previously stated,
we're not exactly gettin' rich here. After the six months are up, it
will be useful for you to know that our pay period covers reviews that
ran on the website between the first and last days of each month, and
that checks are sent quarterly.

September 3, 2025 at 5:55 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

Great piece and just for posterity's sake, discovered my three-bunnyheads-out-of-four review for playboy dot com is still up via the wayback machine (review in alt text to save a click). On "quiet awe": web.archive.org/web/20051101...

A review of the Death Cab for Cutie album Plans from 2005 on Playboy.com. The score is three bunnyheads out of four. Text: In cooler-than-thou indie-rock circles, Death Cab for Cutie was always a little square, since singer Ben Gibbard wears his heart on his sleeve. So it actually makes sense that these nerdy-looking guys with a goofy name would break out of the rock-snob scene and hit the big time. On major-label debut Plans, the veteran quartet fully unleashes its inner soft-rocker, and neither radio-friendly production nor an excess of slow songs dims Gibbard's sparkling melodies and emotive lyrics. Love is still the 29-year-old songwriter's main subject, but now it's weighed down by mortality. "Soul Meets Body" contemplates "the darkness" amid upbeat choruses and guitarist Chris Walla's ornate production. Sparse acoustic ballad "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" and Walla-penned "Brothers on a Hotel Bed" are equally haunting, the latter relying on the band's new favorite instrument, piano. But Plans sees too much hope in the human condition to get depressing. Expansive opener "Marching Bands of Manhattan" imagines moving an island for love, while "Someday You Will Be Loved" lets a would-be Mrs. Gibbard down surprisingly easy. Even when Gibbard sings "love is watching someone die," on emergency-room portrait "What Sarah Said," a quiet awe still seeps through. Sneer if you must, but this square has soul.

August 28, 2025 at 1:32 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

deeper cut but on the left is a Jan 3., 2006 press release, on the right is a Jan. 30, 2006 nyt article

Jan. 3, 2006 press-release email excerpt: "'Hype' isn't a word that can be thrown at Arctic Monkeys."

Jan. 30, 2006 NYT excerpt: "Hype isn't really the right word to describe the Arctic Monkeys phenomenon"

August 25, 2025 at 8:15 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

For The Allocator, wrote about a litigation financing firm's lawsuit accusing the University of Pennsylvania's investment office of sharing confidential pitch documents with... the university's office of general counsel. (subscribe: www.withintelligence.com/investors-re...)

4-D Fundraising Chess

A litigation finance firm sues its Ivy League endowment target over a PowerPoint dispute. Bold strategy, Cotton....

The University of Pennsylvania’s investment team has been accused and sued over allegedly sharing a litigation financing firm’s confidential information — a lawsuit that was dropped without explanation two days later.

Stamford, Connecticut-based TRGP Capital claimed members of the $22.3B UPenn investment team leaked proprietary intel about federal litigation against UPenn to the school’s general counsel’s office after learning about it in a pitch meeting with TRGP.

Three members of UPenn’s investment office — managing director Thomas Woodbury, associate director Sarah Paolella, and investment associate Alex Renaud — met via Zoom with TRGP founders Michael Rozen and William Murphy in mid-June, according to the suit.

The meeting was to discuss UPenn’s potential interest in a new litigation fund that TRGP and Warwick Capital Partners are co-managing, the complaint states. Shortly after the Zoom call, the TRGP founder emailed the allocators two presentations marked confidential, including one with a slide on a federal case “in which UPenn is one of a number of defendants,” per the suit.

TRGP said the slides — labeled “Representative Case Studies” — reflect the process by which the firm reaches investment decision, deal terms, assessments of cases, and return outlooks.

On July 11, TRGP’s Rozen and Murphy learned that UPenn CIO Peter Ammon wanted to speak with them, and the three met the following day via Zoom.

Ammon purportedly told the managers their document had been given to the university’s assistant general counsel — and he planned to share it in court.

On July 21, the night before the slide was to have its day in court, TRGP filed suit. Two days later, they discreetly pulled the case. Such trajectories often occur when the opposing parties reach a confidential settlement — but if they did, it’s confidential.

TRGP asked the court to not only take back their lawsuit but also cover up documentary evidence it had happened. The judge declined to seal the documents about the fund manager’s two-day legal battle over private documents it shared with an allocator target.

It’s unclear which federal litigation involving UPenn reached its long arm of chaos into the investment office: there’s the ongoing antitrust litigation over elite universities’ financial aid, a Title IX suit targeting a transgender swimmer, among others.

$Officials from neither of the two sides would comment on the Pennsylvania Pitchdeck Affair. This is normal for starchy institutions when internal drama goes public, though this is the first instance centered on PowerPoint that comes to mind. We will do our best to fill in critical gaps as we cover this unprecedented conflict: What was on that pitch deck slide to make everyone freak out? Did UPenn settle and if so, for more secrets? How awkward will it be when they randomly run into each other at PensionBridge Alts or climbing a light post after an Eagles parade? But most importantly: Did the pitch work? Crazier things have happened — like endowment staffers finding secret lawsuit intel in a rote manager’s pitch deck about their own organization, telling the higher-ups; a fracas erupts, with an Ivy League CIO squaring off with Manager Whose Strategy Is Lawsuits over a PowerPoint slide, on which the fate of a Federal court case supposedly dangles; Manager sues the target client in bold flex of lawyerly prowess, then drops the case two days later with a motion for Take-Backsies; truces break out, lessons are learned (always, always read TRGP Capital's pitch decks). TRGP started with a 45-min Zoom call and parted with UPenn as counterparties to a slide-based lawsuit. Was it fun? Probably not. But no one's ever going to forget this pitch meeting. —Marc Hogan & Leanna Orr$

August 6, 2025 at 5:04 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

Post-walk-off slice at Gigio’s, still the best after all these years (I don’t remember them having a liquor license before but I mainly wasn’t 21)

August 3, 2025 at 10:50 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

Journalist and giant kid at Wrigley Field

August 3, 2025 at 2:20 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

I still get stupidly nervous about these things, but I felt like my chat with Jim James last night at the Pabst Theater went great. At least, his part did! Here we are in the green room afterward.

The author and My Morning Jacket's Jim James at the Pabst Theater after an interview onstage for the National Independent Venue Association 2025 conference

June 23, 2025 at 10:17 AM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

Caught my friends Ramona and the Sometimes (led by @rararamonaml.bsky.social) last night, highly recommend

The band Ramona and the Sometimes performs at HiFi near Valley Junction, West Des Moines, Iowa

The band Ramona and the Sometimes performs at HiFi near Valley Junction, West Des Moines, Iowa. I’m standing farther back for this one.

June 1, 2025 at 1:26 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

Oh nice! They've been hinting at this at least since they spoke to me last summer. Was wondering what would happen. www.nytimes.com/2024/10/03/a...

While the company’s chief executive, Romain Boudruche, acknowledged an initial struggle to find suppliers, he said We Are Rewind sold almost 20,000 cassette players last year and hopes to double that number in 2024. He outlined plans for a smaller version and a boombox, plus collaborations with artists and brands. “The possibilities are really big, even if it’s a still a niche,” Boudruche said.

May 29, 2025 at 5:55 PM

Marc Hogan

@marchogan.bsky.social

More innocent times? (Warning, this 2006 review contains a non-disparaging R. Kelly allusion. But it also has a favorable mention of a Gloria Estefan song, so there's that!) pitchfork.com/reviews/albu...