Arjun Raghavan
The Architect
Structured and legacy-driven; builds the systems and institutions that last.
Arjun Raghavan emerges in this interview as a methodical systems builder whose leadership is defined by structural thinking applied to portfolio construction and organizational design. He articulates a clear evolution from endowment model 1.0 to a two-engine framework, separating market beta from genuine alpha generation, and insists on decomposing risk into underlying factor exposures rather than asset class labels.
“But you are equally a large firm seeking out not just good managers, but new ideas, the or alternative alternatives sounds a bit Rumsfeld-esque, actually, that. But anyway, explain to me how you organize yourselves so you can have people in your offices seeking out both the manager opportunity and the investment subsets.”
“We don't really focus on tracking error, particularly we're not focused obsessively about benchmarks and peer returns, et cetera. So we don't think about that. But we do think about risk budgeting as a concept.”
“So our view is stick to the netting, put your risk That you feel comfortable with, the base speed that you're comfortable with, and keep it there. Now, then the question is what do you do with that risk then?”
“So those are the sort of the three core principles. I think they work very well in the 90s and 2000s. But I think there were issues with the endowment model that became evident as we ramped up towards the global financial crisis.”
Money Maze Podcast: “The $40 Billion Outsourced Investment Office - With Arjun Raghavan, CEO of Partners Capital”
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