Masters in Business · Friday, July 31, 2026
Som Seif discussed the significant growth of Claymore, the ETF firm he co-founded, highlighting its resilience during the 2008 financial crisis, where it was one of the few firms to achieve positive net sales. This strong performance ultimately led to its acquisition by BlackRock in 2011.
“We went through two thousand and eight and every single month and o eight we grew positively. We had the net positive sales I think we were going to bite the market environment.”
“So coming out of two thousand, we ended up in two thousand and eight growing from eight hundred million to one point one billion, despite the head of the markets, and then in two thousand and nine we went from one point one billion to four point four billion.”
“Blackrock was a leading partner at that and I remember pivoting multiple times as the price kept going up on who my partner was going to be to finanza my buyout.”