Who is to blame, AM, ACQ, or Portfolio?

I work at a mid sized shop that has holdings across all property types in the US. We are mostly core / core+ investors. 

Recently the firm has been struggling and people are pointing fingers at each other. 

AM says ACQ buys bad deals, they are not to blame because they don't decide what to buy or sell. 

ACQ says AM doesn't know how to execute the business plan, they are not to blame because they get good deals, but AM doesn't know when to exit a deal. 

Portfolio blames AM and ACQ for everything.  

When things goes bad, who's really to blame? I would say portfolio because at the end of the day they have the final say on what goes in and out of the portfolio. 

Thoughts? 

9 Comments
 

You’ve provided little to no useful information for us to actually know who to blame. My baseless answer, which is a very cliche one at that, is that it’s a little bit of everybody’s fault. Also it may be the leadership’s fault. When everybody is pointing fingers at another team, guess who nobody is paying attention to? Whether that be MD or CEO, shit culture and bad decision making usually flows from the top.

 

CREHippo

Also it may be the leadership's fault. When everybody is pointing fingers at another team, guess who nobody is paying attention to? Whether that be MD or CEO, shit culture and bad decision making usually flows from the top.

Going to second this. If the different departments are pointing fingers at each other instead of working as a team, that's a shit culture. 

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

Like y’all of the above, but in my opinion mostly should fall on portfolio as they are in charge of everything end of day. Acq may be underwriting too aggressively and AM may not be executing on business plan, but portfolio should be managing risk in terms of asset type and geographic distribution and there are times to be risk on and risk off, late teens was absolutely time to be risk off and I’d bet they dropped the ball on that.

 
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