Investment Philosophy: We adhere to seasoned investment principles that maximize our clients’ risk-adjusted returns after taxes, inflation and fees.  We believe that asset allocation is the primary determinant of both long-term returns and the variance in those returns.  We recommend strategic diversification and systematic portfolio rebalancing, and we believe that taxable investors should limit tactical allocation maneuvering.  We select asset classes and managers not securities.  We avoid unwarranted complexity.  We respect the power of time to reduce volatility and to drive compound growth. 

We focus on minimizing the huge, often-hidden costs from taxes, inflation, management fees and transaction fees.  We encourage clients to take only those risks that can be understood and that have commensurate return expectations.  We recommend only managers who we trust and who we firmly believe will outperform on a risk-adjusted basis in their asset class.  We aim for low manager turnover.  We seek and negotiate fee arrangements that align manager incentives with our clients’ interests.  We recommend vehicles in illiquid, alternative investment classes where warranted by risk-adjusted return expectations and by performance dispersion and persistence.

Investment Research and Knowledge Management: We are committed to state-of-the-art research and knowledge management on asset allocation and investment vehicle selection.  We seek best-of-breed investment opportunities globally in fixed income, absolute return, long-biased hedged equity, public equity, private equity and venture capital, real estate, natural resources and inflation hedging.  Research on asset allocation and on each major asset class is overseen by committees of senior professionals.  All senior and selected mid-level professionals are required to contribute substantial time to the research function.  We also work on an integrated basis with a handful of outside specialist firms who complement and deepen our asset class research.

Client-Level Implementation: We customize client-specific investment recommendations after extensive dialog with clients about their objectives, risk tolerance, tax situation, entity structures, scenario modeling sensitivities and other circumstances.  We guide decision-making and execution, but our clients retain authority.  All vehicle recommendations come from a list approved by the committee overseeing each asset class.  In certain sub-classes, we take advantage of our clients’ aggregate assets of more than $10 billion to gain pooled access to otherwise inaccessible managers and to negotiate institutional-caliber fee structures.

Reporting: We provide clients with extensive reports to evaluate investment performance and to track portfolio changes, taxable gains and losses, capital calls and distributions, options exercises and hedging transactions.  We endeavor to provide full transparency on fees and transaction costs across the portfolio.