Buyouts staff

Kevin Nee, the president of Wilshire Private Markets, talks in this video about the ways the Santa Monica-based fund-of-funds shop, a 40-member group within Wilshire Associates, evaluates candidates for investments, 65 percent of which are LBO funds run by mid-market and small-market managers. Wilshire doesn’t want to be an index of private equity, Nee says. “We want to do something for our clients that they can’t do on their own.”

Even as many investors move into index funds, Harvard University is confident that it can keep posting above-average returns with actively managed investments, the head of the school’s investment arm said on Wednesday.

Maurice Gordon, senior investment principal at Guardian Life Insurance, talks in this video about the company’s $1 billion in commitments to a diverse private equity portfolio, some 60 percent of which is dedicated to buyouts, mostly smaller funds.

Bo Ramsey, a senior investment analyst at the Indiana Public Retirement System, discusses the agency’s approach to develop a well rounded private equity portfolio. The agency, with $25 billion of assets under management, has a 10 percent allocation to the asset class.

Philip Godfrey, a partner at San Francisco-based fund of funds manager Bay Hills Capital, talks in this video about his firm’s exclusive focus on small to mid-market buyout funds with less than $1 billion under management. The firm, he says favors focused portfolios, primarily in North America, of firms investing in companies with less than $250 million in enterprise value

Karen Rode, a partner at Hewitt EnnisKnupp, talks in this video about her firm, a private equity team and investment consultant within the larger consulting firm AON plc, an insurer and risk management expert. Within the private equity group, the firm has been investing $1 billion a year on average for the past five years, either making commitments or advising clients, to strategies including infrastructure, standard buyouts, venture, mezzanine and debt strategies.

Bill Leavitt, the president and chief investment officer of Leavitt Capital Management, talks in this video about the Northbrook, Ill.-based advisory firm’s opportunistic approach to investing strategies. In buyout funds, the firm favors highly specialized niches such as energy, Latin American agriculture, logistics and water-related investments.

Randal W. Ralph, a managing director at Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual Capital, talks in this video about how the $31 billion firm makes its allocations in equities. Although more than three quarters of its assets are investment grade fixed income, the firm does allocate nearly 10 percent of its portfolio to limited partnerships.

Damon Krytzer, trustee of the San Jose Police and Fire Retirement Fund, talks in this video about his fund’s investment strategy, which features a 10 percent allocation to private equity and a 10 percent allocation to real assets.

Seiichi Saito, a director at Alternative Investment Capital Ltd, a Tokyo-based gatekeeper and fund of funds manager, discusses his firm’s strategy for investing in private equity, which has a 70 percent allocation to North America.