This is a transcript of the GRIP podcast: GC John Hornbostel on enabling compliance and integrity, featuring a conversation between GRIP US editor Catherine Ollinger and John Hornbostel, “outsourced” general counsel and an esteemed private funds lawyer.
[INTRO]
Catherine Ollinger: Welcome to the GRIP Podcast, everyone. I’m your host, Catherine Ollinger, US Editor for GRIP. And today we are very excited to be in the studio with our guest, John Hornbostel.
John describes himself as an outsourced general counsel with over three decades practicing law and more than 20 years in top tier general counsel positions. We are honored to speak with him today to learn more about his experience and glean some critical insights into and implications for the realm of risk and compliance. But before we jump into the questions, I would love to pass the mic over to John and ask him to briefly introduce himself in his own words. Over to you.
John Hornbostel: Thanks, Catherine. Great to be here. Looking forward to talking about it. Yeah, so John Hornbostel. So the last five years I’ve been on my own doing the outsourced general counsel. I’ve been an in-house counsel for about 20 plus years prior to that. Really enjoyed being part of the management team and a trusted counselor. Stepping back, my experience is basically I’ve become a private funds lawyer and so I’ve been working in all kinds of strategies in the alternative space in a variety of different large asset management firms and now for some smaller emerging managers and emerging companies over the last several years.
Catherine Ollinger: Awesome. Perfect. Thank you so much again. Pleasure to speak with you today. So let’s get into it. In your career, you’ve described your role as less of a gatekeeper and more of a translator. Someone who can translate legal, regulatory and compliance complexities to management, to colleagues with functional experience in different areas and to the board. You’re also someone who can effectively communicate across jurisdictions and specialties.
So can you start off by telling us more about your journey and why being a master of these so-called specialty languages is critical to being an effective partner?
John Hornbostel: Yeah, sure, Catherine. Now that’s great. And I think as I thought about this, I think there’s three general traits that I’ve had in my experience, which is first of all, a variety of experience in different types of transactions and jurisdictions, a practice that’s been global oriented, so exposed to multiple jurisdictions, and then finally, an experience that’s in the corporate governance realm. And so maybe I’ll just touch upon each of those in turn.
So from the variety perspective, I think that really goes back to when I was in a law firm and the partner said, I really encourage each of you to work on as many different types of transactions as possible. Because once you get that common framework, then when the next new one comes along, you’ll be that much better prepared to address it.
And so I took that to heart. It may not be great for the specialization that the law firms expect, but it was great for me and my practice. So I took that to heart and at each of the organizations that I’ve been in, I’ve had a chance to grow their businesses and help them go into new specialties or jurisdictions. So for example, AIG investments, we really were investing the insurance company money in private equity and hedge funds.
And they decided to launch a third party asset management business, the classic other people’s money. So I was helping them build an ecosystem starting with fund of funds to direct investments to secondaries. And each one of those expansions was almost a new language. So first of all, just managing other people’s money when they were just been deploying their own capital, that was a new language to speak.
And then I mentioned secondaries, that’s a hot area now. And that is a completely different type of structure than sort of your typical investments. I went to K2 Advisors, the fund of hedge funds, where they were growing their business from more commingled products to strategic investment partnerships, strategic advisory, expanding beyond the traditional commingled funds.
So again, there was another opportunity to talk about the way different strategies work within that framework. And then at Franklin Templeton, I was the private funds lawyer at the mutual fund. We’ll talk a little bit more about it later, but we did their first venture capital fund in a mutual fund context, which was again, the classic talking private fund to the mutual fund, people and lawyers.
And in the last few years, it’s been fun to work with different clients, such as Life Sciences Venture Capital where I do their deal work and I translate what the business intent is into a term sheet, and to try to document the deal and make sure that it has a legal and structural framework that works. I’ve done things like I’ve been hired to do a rated note feeder structure, complex transaction, which I haven’t never done before, but I’ve done other complex transactions.
So I was able to handle all that. So that’s kind of the variety that gives you an ability to translate and explain the next new complexity to the clients. And then of course, each one of these institutions, as you know, is very globally oriented. So doing deals and having offices in other jurisdictions was very helpful to learn all that. And with the law firm, in fact, I spent a couple of years in Prague in the Czech Republic, or Czechia now.
And that was a very interesting experience because we had brought the New York sort of mentality and the typical way of doing deals and the Prague lawyers will say: “Why do you have to do it that way?” And you’re like: “Well, maybe you don’t have to do it that way. Let’s talk about the pros and cons.” And so it was an ability to step back, recognize why it was being done a certain way, that there were other alternatives to that. And when you can kind of have that perspective, you can then explain the next new thing to your clients. And then finally, I mentioned that sort of corporate governance.
I sat on the boards for some of the K2 funds. I’ve been the corporate secretary for several of the companies. And that’s another level of discourse where you really have to distill down to your board members in a very succinct way, what are the issues? What are the risks that you’re intending to address and how to mitigate them? And you have to learn to speak that language. And then you also have to learn to be able to then maybe go into a little more detail with the CFO on things that may affect sort of operational and finance elements where the HR person is going to be another language. I think it’s a great concept to think about it as translating.
Catherine Ollinger: Yeah, no, I love that. You’ve built a highly successful portfolio serving as an outsourced general counsel, particularly for emerging companies and managers. So when a firm transitions from using these kind of rigid outside billable hour councils to more of an embedded strategic partner like yourself, what are some of the advantages that they experience? And also, what structural or information sharing intricacies do you have to navigate?
John Hornbostel: Yeah, it’s a great question, Catherine. And I think even though I’m outsourced, so technically not an employee, I like to think of myself as part of the team and being integrated. And I think that’s one of the advantages of being, whether it’s outsourced or in-house, is you’re part of the team as much as possible, you’re there with them.
The classic example that I always understood when I moved in-house was that outside counsel would present some alternatives. Here are the different options and the in-house lawyer has to be able to recommend and be in a position to advocate for why that makes sense for the business. So another element that you have being outsourced or in-house is that you know the business, you’re much more close to the business and you’re able to make those recommendations, but it was quite daunting at first.
The other thing is you’re there day to day, sort of figuratively if you’re outsourced like I am, but for one of my clients right now, I attend the weekly meetings and we’re just talking about, even though I’m the counsel, we’re talking about all the issues that come up. So that’s a big difference is you’re able to see things before they occur and maybe look around the corner and say, “Hey, if you start going in this direction, you need to watch out for X, Y, and Z.”
And that’s a big and important difference. And so the way I work with outside counsel is I try to work hand in glove and in an efficient way. And so for example, on the venture capital financings that I do for one like I say, I’ll do the term sheets. And if we’re the lead investor, then I’ll rely on outside counsel to come in because other investors will want to see a name firm, generally speaking, to rely on as opposed to Hornbostel law offices.
And I can also then a quarterback the review process. So for example, we had a recent transaction where the comments came in, all great comments, but there were 22 comments, and without sort of an in-house or outsourced resource to evaluate the business people are going to be kind of overwhelmed a little bit. And so what I would do is distill those and eliminate the ones that were easy, either based on prior practice or they were just clearly a legal question.
And I distilled it into like a handful of issues remaining for the business team. And then I think importantly, and this is one of the differences, is then I would recommend where we should come out. So if outside counsel said, “Hey, there’s this issue with the governance threshold and you could go to a majority or you could go super majority,” I would say, “I think a super majority in this case, given our shareholdings and the pro forma is the right way to go.”
So that’s part of what we’ve done there. In another example, we had a fund we were negotiating with the anchor investor, and it was a big side letter. They wanted all these special terms. And so we got on a sort of all hands call. We had the business representatives. I was the in-house lawyer. We had the in-house lawyer for the anchor, and we had the two outside counsel, great firms, great lawyers.
The challenge is they don’t want to make concessions on these calls. So we had a call and just didn’t get anywhere. So we reconvened with just the business people in the in-house counsel. And needless to say, we made a lot of progress just because I think in that role, again, like I say, we’re willing to recommend where we go and not just say, “No.”
Catherine Ollinger: Awesome. Yeah, thank you. And that’s actually a perfect segue into my next question. To look at kind of a concrete example of that translation skill we talked about earlier. So when an investment manager transitions their strategy or structures from venture capital into broader private fund or even registered fund models, the mechanics change pretty dramatically. And from a regulatory and compliance standpoint, how do you handle that transition? And what structural friction points should emerging managers be aware of?
John Hornbostel: So I think in looking at that transition to broader fund complex, basically, you have a couple of things I find to bear in mind. One is that at an earlier stage, an emerging manager, and I sort of like this from my personal perspective, you’re kind of a hands-on and everything. And so is everyone else. You’re doing everything and you’re just trying to get things done in a legal and compliant way, but the robust processes and framework is not there yet.
And that’s one of the things that transitions as you grow into a bigger business. A couple of things happen. You move from maybe some high net worth investors and friends and family to more institutional investors, and they’re going to have certain expectations and certain DDQs, due diligence questionnaires that they’re going to ask you to fill out and they’re going to expect certain policies and procedures to be in place. So you have to start to build out that infrastructure. You can’t be a jack of all trades. You have to sort of start to specialize.
And I think for the lawyer, it’s important to ensure that you’re not doing everything, that you can work with the other functions to appropriately allocate responsibility. Sometimes people think, okay, well, this is an LP investing in the fund and they’re asking all these questions for extra reports and all that. Well, it’s important to specify who’s going to be preparing that report.
So one example is to prepare like a side letter compendium. So you might have multiple investors. And again, this is going to happen as you get bigger that have different side letters with special reports that they might get. And so putting that all in one place, and again, there are service providers that can help sort of digitize that. But importantly, as I say, then specifying, a lot of times the letter just says the company is going to do X, saying, okay, is that finance that will do that? Is that some other function is that the investment management has to do some reports? So that’s a good thing to focus on.
We had an example where it was retained by a firm that was going through the SEC’s risk alert on ESG had come out several years ago, and they had previously been advised to implement some ESG activities in their portfolio. And so we just went through all their public facing documents, their RFPs, their marketing material brochures, and just said, okay, they say that they’re doing this, let’s go talk to those functions and make sure they’re doing that. And it was a very productive exercise.
For the most part, they were doing what they had said, but one of the things was they were supposed to be putting it into their performance reviews, how people were doing with ESG, and the HR person was like, really? So this was a good gap to have discovered and move on with. Another example in terms of growing is it was a transaction that we had done several years ago, which was a securitization of private equity funds at a prior employer.
And this was a, as a private funds lawyer trying to deal with the securitization functions was a very different and it was a challenge to translate that to those functions. But it really started out with a phone call that my business lead got. He was in Rome and the head of the firm said, remember that liquidity solution? Because again, the insurance company is holding private equity on their balance sheets, they get charged a risk-based capital premium for the illiquid investments.
And so by doing a securitization, you were able to get some liquidity and beneficial capital treatment. So the business lead had been advocating this approach to the head of the organization who said, you know, that idea you had, well, let’s go ahead and do that. And that was, this was in October. And he said, and we need to get it done by year end. So we had that challenge upon us. And one of the things that had to be prepared was a structure memo, like in days after this came down.
And so I had a little bit of a challenge because the advisor that was working with us wanted to use a particular law firm that wasn’t one of the firms that we typically used. So I remember going to my boss saying, you know, I was prepared to say, we’ve got to stand up for our firm and use our firm. And he said, you know, given the timing issues that we have, you’re better off kind of just going with their firm.
Because if we insist on ours, and it was a well-regarded firm, there was no question that we’re in the right place. We just hadn’t worked with them before. But it was kind of a risk-based analysis to say, look, yeah, we prefer to use our relationship firms, but in this case, let’s see what happens. And you’re better, you’re probably better off. It worked out great, but it was sort of a nice little lesson there.
And so, yeah, we had nine insurance companies and 64 private equity funds that we put into this billion dollar securitization vehicle. And it had all the complexity that you can imagine from that. And at the closing dinner, they said, John, we’re going to give you this catcher’s mask because you’ve been taking it from all sides. You’ve got the investors, you’ve got the regulators, and you’ve got the securitization lawyers. And so that was my securitization story.
Catherine Ollinger: That’s a great example. High profile corporate governance failures often happen because no one felt empowered to say, stop, this isn’t right. And while a general counsel certainly isn’t the sole keeper of a company’s conscience, you are a critical pillar of it. So how do you leverage your position as an outside fractional strategic partner to help management and boards navigate reputational risk and foster a culture of integrity?
John Hornbostel: Yeah, no, it’s a super important question. And I think what helps is being a function that’s not reporting up to the management level people. You might be reporting to the CEO, but you have the ability as a separate function to be able to talk more honestly. I think the other things one needs to do to mitigate those risks is be as integrated as possible with the business, both formally and informally.
The legal department was in a separate building where my investment client was in another building. And I would make an excuse to go over just talk to the business people and give them my advice. And what invariably would happen is you’d end up with a legal pad full of other questions and issues that they had been thinking about, but you were getting into them early and they were able to be asking you, what do you think about this as opposed to here’s what we’re doing and now we want to execute it.
And in that case, you have a less of ability to influence and mitigate the sort of the reputational issues that might arise. Formally, you also should be what I found to be effective was to have periodic meetings with legal compliance in the business heads. So not in the heat of the battle or in the middle of some transaction, but like say quarterly, and you would get together and the business would be able to talk about, okay, here’s what we’re thinking about doing down the line. And so you could kind of get your arms around what legal and compliance and regulatory issues that might give rise to.
And then that was an opportunity for also compliance to talk about, hey, people aren’t getting their personal trading reports in on time. And that’s a theme we’re seeing or whatever the theme was and give the business an opportunity to sort of focus on that and address that. Or what are some of the new regulatory issues that are coming down the pike.
I found it to be very helpful at one of the organizations I was with to be a part of their new product committee. So the parent organization had a product committee and the general counsel sat on as a non-voting observer. So my unit was a multi-asset solutions unit, and they had their own committee that would approve things before they went up to the parent committee.
And so I followed that lead and I got myself as a non-voting observer on that committee. And it was just an ability to see what was happening and that they were structuring things, dealing with a certain type of client that might give rise to different issues, setting up a structure in a jurisdiction that might be a little bit more challenging than others, and being able to sort of head things off the past.
So I think that getting out in front is very important. And the final thing that I think has been super valuable is to foster your network of peers and colleagues, whether they’re fellow in-house compliance or legal people, industry organizations, reading the grip newsletters. Definitely, yes. But getting that perspective, because I think you really want to be in the middle of the herd.
You don’t want to be too far ahead and get yourself the attention of regulators, but you don’t want to have the business fall behind where everyone else sort of is. And a lot of things from the regulatory perspective can be somewhat ambiguous about how to operationalize it. So you kind of want to hear what other people are doing on that front.
Catherine Ollinger: Sure. Yeah, no, definitely. And so we touched on this earlier, but you have extensive experience setting up investment funds all around the world, because non-executive directors and fund boards aren’t necessarily in the daily weeds. They rely on you to tell them why a regulatory issue matters now. So when you’re structuring funds across these deeply diverse jurisdictions, how do you synthesize those differing global compliance requirements into a clear, concise, bottom line up front kind of presentation for a board?
John Hornbostel: It can be challenging, no, for sure. So I think, again, I think it goes back to the experience, the breadth of experience that either you have or you can draw upon. And that’s to be able to ask the right questions. So there was an example where we were asked to submit an RFP, a request for proposal from a major financial institution. And they wanted the company I was with at the time to manage a number of their portfolios. They had emerging, affluent depositors in all parts of the world.
So I don’t know, almost just think of the World Cup and the countries. And that’s where we had to go. I mean, literally, it was like Russia, Poland, Brazil, Argentina, Hong Kong. And so to submit the RFP on what your proposed structure would be and what the fees would be, I had to do a little research in all these jurisdictions. And again, I was the solutions lawyer, not the mutual fund or registered funds lawyer, but I had to know enough about each of these structures and what’s typically involved.
Are there issues with charging fees on fees? Are there custodial requirements in particular jurisdictions that would increase the cost? So just coming up with a common set of questions at a high level, and then the firm was brought, so we might have Hong Kong counsel, so I’d send it to our Hong Kong counsel or our Brazil counsel internally and get their high level answers.
I think there was also a tool that you could ask, one of the law firms had a global tool and you could ask some basic questions. But with that basic information, again, it wasn’t going to be definitive, but at least for the RFP, you could down what the requirements were. So that kind of helped and we ended up winning that RFP.
Catherine Ollinger: So let’s flip the geography for a moment. When international businesses establish their bases of operations here in the US, they often face a rude awakening regarding US regulatory scrutiny from the SEC to strict AML and KYC protocols. So what are the biggest cultural or operational compliance shocks in your experience that international firms have to face when they’re adapting to the US environment?
John Hornbostel: So for the international firms, I think there’s a number of different things. One is just the civil law and common law frameworks. So I remember when I was working in Prague for the law firm, part of our proposition was to do translations in English and in Czech of the documents. And these are long documents and translation was a priority. So needless to say, we took care of our translator. He liked single malt scotch.
We had happy hours with single malt scotch, but we were on a deal and one day he came up to me and he said, “Here, have a stock purchase agreement that says you’re going to sell, assign, transfer and deliver the stock.” He said, “Well, we have one word that does all that. Can I use that one?” I said, “Yeah, but it just gives you a… When you’re coming from a civil law perspective, it’s much more embodied in the statutory regime and you don’t need all those words. We have those words in the common law jurisdiction because that’s the way the case law has developed over the years.”
So I think that’s one thing is just coming added. If you’re from a civil law jurisdiction, coming into a common law jurisdiction, you’re going to experience that difference that things aren’t driven by the statute. They’re driven by the words that have been developed because of case law and the common law. So I think that’s one thing. Oh, and just on the translation issues, there was another situation where we had, you have to specify which language governs.
So if you have an English version and a Czech version, we defaulted to that English law would govern. So once we had to compromise and say that the Articles of Association, because that was the local document, that the Czech law would govern. So we had a situation where the English law documents said Czech governs, but the Czech translator had caught up, so the Czech version had the English law governing. So we fixed that before we closed. It was a challenge. But that’s another element, I think, that just the way generally are focused on the contractual relationships.
So I think that the US has a tendency to want to document in the contract every possible contingency that happens. Well, if this happens, you get a termination right at that, whereas I think generally other cultures are more, the contract is the start of the relationship. So it’s a stepping off point, and then they’ll work those details out as part of the relationship. So that’s something that the non-US firms need to focus on. And we have a very litigious society.
And I think that is an adjustment for people. What that also relates to is there’s a little more personal accountability, I think, that we have here that is maybe an adjustment for folks that are non-US, where there’s certainly corporate accountability. And one thing that translates on that, I was just listening to a seminar about the interaction between a general counsel and the board and the importance of the communication and the trust and the GC being part of that forum.
And someone pointed out that in other jurisdictions, that’s not necessarily the case. There’s a corporate secretary that’s the legally mandated function that’s in the meeting. And so they don’t generally bring their GCs in there. And so again, I think that’s another thing that a non-US business would need to keep an eye on is you want to make your general counsel, at least ideally, part of that strategic conversation.
Catherine Ollinger: That’s so interesting. And so you’ve worked extensively in asset management, primarily private funds, including at firms with a wide array of product and solutions offerings, including registered funds and separately managed accounts. These organizations often face the challenge of balancing product innovation, investor expectations, and evolving regulatory requirements. So can you describe a situation where you helped develop a solution that enabled a strategic business objective while effectively operating?
John Hornbostel: Yes, there’s a couple that maybe I’ll just briefly touch upon. One was we had the fund of funds that I mentioned K2 advisors. And when we were actually acquired by Franklin Templeton, and this was at the start of liquid alternatives. So the hedge funds became sub advisors to mutual funds. So it was a totally new world for K2 to be dealing with the registered fund environment. And those managers becoming sub advisors to the mutual fund and the board reporting that was one element to that that was, I think it’s important to have good relationships with regulators, was the Luxembourg was the typical place to launch the for the usage for the offshore vehicles.
They had a requirement, unlike Ireland, that the underlying sub managers had to file their financial reports. So no hedge fund manager would do that. So thankfully, one of our the internal lawyers had a relationship with the firm, had a relationship with the regulator and talked to them drop that requirement. So we were able to use the Luxembourg domicile that had a lot of other benefits. But there was a big project where within the mutual fund firm of launching their first venture fund was the also the first private fund for the portfolio managers. And there were a whole series of mini projects, if you will, that had to be done so many first time issues.
The first again was a council issue. The general counsel had their approved law firms, none of whom were venture capital specialists. So I made the case, I think appropriately in this regard that you needed to have that special counsel, even though they might not be familiar with the Franklin funds, there was other private funds, but they’re just very different than venture and that you really need the expertise.
So we went with the firm that had that and that was super helpful. And then we started with the summary term sheet. I’ve always found that to be a valuable tool for management to be able to use to get it approved and to start talking to strategic limited partners. Another first of its kind thing that we had to do was we had a number of strategic advisory board members and they joined the fund and signed a letter of intent, but the normal compliance procedures would capture them as consultants and subject them to all the policies and procedures like personal trade reporting, which doesn’t make sense for them.
So I worked in collaboration with compliance to come up with a sort of framework for these individuals so they wouldn’t be subject to the full blown compliance. We also had an opportunity to summarize all of the important terms. The anchor investor wanted certain key man rights, no fault removal rights. And this was, again, new to this firm.
So I prepared a table summarizing those terms and what they had done in other private funds for those similar types of terms, because these were sort of institutional provisions. What Iltber provided just as a reference point at the International Limited Partners Association and then what outside council recommended. And that kind of gave a roadmap for the management to kind of look at this and get a benefit. And the final thing that I thought worked well is, again, with a private fund like this, the professionals get carried interest, the performance based compensation.
And this was all new to them, the individuals, they need to have their own lawyers review the documents for the finance folks, for HR folks. So once we got sort of an agreed parameters, I had sort of a carried interest one on one session we brought in our outside council. He also that partner happened to be a tax specialist, so it was very helpful. And we just had we walked through exactly what it meant, what the terms were. And it was just a good educational session and helped facilitate getting that done.
Catherine Ollinger: Awesome. Yeah, another great example. So zooming out a little bit, there is a fascinating shift happening where legal and compliance is kind of moving away from strict box checking and toward behavioral economics, understanding why people make decisions and how corporate culture drives risk. So how do you integrate psychological safety and behavioral insights into your practice so that employees actively pull legal into the room early rather than hiding risks?
John Hornbostel: No, it’s a great question. And I was reminded of several years ago when there was a number of insider trading investigations, the FBI was looking at all these hedge funds, I was at the fund of funds at the time. And so we were very focused on this issue because of many of our hedge fund managers had people that were implicated. You didn’t know if there were witnesses or they were actually implicated. So you had to delve into a little more detail on what was going on. But there was a lot of I brought in a firm, we had a discussion have the insider trading rules changed or what’s happening?
And to this behavioral point, it was really these expert network firms that were being involved. And if you think about it, you have some junior analyst for hedge fund, and then some, let’s say doctor, they’re each looking to make money and they’re in a room together and they know that there are parameters or they should know about what they can talk about, but it’s just the incentives are there to kind of make the other person happy.
And so we talked a lot about that and how to police that, certainly having a sort of a written acknowledgement that you’re not going to reveal any confidential information and even maybe starting that as an opener to the call. But I thought an interesting one was to say to your analyst at the hedge fund that compliance could sit in the call. I mean, to have compliance sit in on every call would not be great, but it’s like that panopticon where the prisons were like open cells so that you could observe the people. You might not be watching them all the time, but the possibility that you could be watching them has a behavioral effect.
And I think a lot of people talked about how that could work if you just said, “Look, we might have compliance in there.” So I think the other things are, again, to sort of get to that point, you really, understanding the business is a super important way to get your business colleagues to trust you and get you involved. And to physically be with the business, we actually spent a lot of time thinking about the structure of the legal team and making sure, as I mentioned, I would cross the street to the investments team.
So having a law department in a separate building isn’t sort of that great. So we really kind of made sure that we had specialists that could serve the business unit and what they were trying to do, and then sit them there. And so then you’re sitting in on the meeting so you know what’s going on. I think you also have to demonstrate your value add. In other words, you can’t… Well, I’d love to say, just say, “Yeah, include me in a meeting on issues.” It’s hard to say, “You need to include me on that issue until you demonstrate your value add.”
So if there’s an issue that has arisen with the business and you can say, “If you addressed it this way, maybe it would work.” Once you start giving that value add, then they’re like, “Hey, yeah, John was helpful on that point. I’m going to call him up when I have another issue like that.” And that’s a good way to get in there. And again, it’s the training. We used to do lunch and learns a lot and find a topic of interest to the business and bring in some expert in that area to have them talk about it. And then you’re hearing what the business is interested in. You’re helping provide some solutions.
We did a lot of work with the marketing team at a big organization. I had a situation where I got the… I have to say, I didn’t really enjoy reviewing the marketing material because usually there’s really… It’s low value add in a lot of ways. Somebody’s got a presentation due tomorrow. So, “Catherine, can you look at this before it goes out tomorrow?”
But I got the call from the head of the business at one point and the head of sales was in the office and they were looking at a presentation. And they said, “John, his disclaimers are like four pages long as long as the presentation itself.” And I’m like, “Oh, geez, am I going to have to explain why you have past performance? It’s not a guarantee of future results and why you have this projections disclaimer in there.” I’m like getting all ready to do this. And then I quickly look at the disclaimers and they had printed duplicates for some reason. So, it wasn’t actually four pages. I said, “There’s your issue.” And I was like happy about that.
Catherine Ollinger: Yeah, no, awesome. Great answer. So, my final question for you, John, is about the future. Looking forward, what shifts or emerging trends are you most excited about in the world of regulation and compliance? And what legacy do you hope to leave behind as a strategic legal partner?
John Hornbostel: As businesses grow, what I like doing is helping them grow and being a strategic partner to the businesses and working a renewable energy project in Latin America right now where they’re setting up a fund that’s going to have the indigenous communities investing in the fund as an equity stakeholder. I don’t think anything’s been done like that, at least according to the client has been done like that in the world.
So, it’s kind of fun to work on things like that. So, I find myself continuing to enjoy helping businesses grow, being in there at the start of a business, thinking about the issues being a strategic partner and working from that perspective to particularly where there’s an impact. The venture capital fund that I’m working on is a life sciences. We’re investing in precision health and precision medicine. Hopefully, we do well by doing good. Some of the things they’re working on are really exciting. And so, it becomes also a lot about the people that you’re working with and working with great people.
Catherine Ollinger: Awesome. Yeah, that’s a great note to end on and optimistic too. So, thank you so much again, John, for being our guest today.
John Hornbostel: Thank you.
Catherine Ollinger: And many thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. Don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn and grip.com updated with daily content, including articles, videos, and podcasts. And stay tuned for our upcoming podcast this summer. We have some more very exciting episodes like this one coming up. Until next time.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of their employer, the moderator, or Global Relay.