In our view, many placement agents are overly prescriptive in what they look for in an asset manager they would wish to represent.   They focus on brand recognition or on metrics like scale of AUM, length of track record or the number of prior funds.  Perhaps they feel this gives them the pick of the most saleable strategies.  Or perhaps they aren’t confident in their ability to rise to the challenge of a difficult capital raise.

We take a different view.  We think institutional investors are constantly looking for innovation and differentiation: new ideas and new sources of return in capacity-constrained global markets where competitive advantages are hard to come by.  We believe the bar of institutional credibility is not set based on simple metrics, and consequently we are happy to hear from any organisation that thinks they have a proposition with institutional appeal.

While our primary focus is on private market and real assets strategies, we will happily consider differentiated offerings in public equity and fixed income.

Further, we recognise that sophisticated asset owners don’t just seek products.  Many are also interested in finding appropriate stand-alone deals, so we welcome approaches where capital is sought for individual deals, co-investments or joint ventures, or where a manager has interesting origination capabilities.