Private Capital: Intelligence for the Family Office Investor

"The Trifecta of learning throughout your life is always have great teachers, great partners personally and professionally and great students to teach." Today's podcast is with Mitch Julis, the legendary co-founder of Canyon Partners.   Mitch was the keynote at the Circulus Family Office Summit in the fall of 2025.   We talked about his background in the Bronx, how Lowell Milken took a chance on a...

Everyone knows about liar's poker, but do you know about the other game played by the Salomon traders? Today's guest is Curtis Arledge, Chairman and CEO of Mariner Investment Group, a $10 billion multi-strategy fund based in New York.   He started his career studying lasers at Princeton before finding himself at the epicenter of the mortgage-backed securities boom at Salomon Brothers. He was an ea...

Today, we are joined by Laurence Russian, a Founding Partner at ABS Global Investments, which manages more than $12 billion in assets. Laurence's career began at the legendary Brazilian investment bank Banco Garantia, the predecessor to 3G Capital. After a tenure at Credit Suisse, Laurence and his partners struck out on their own in 2002 to build a firm that prioritizes specialist expertise over g...

We have a special bonus episode today taking you behind the scenes to discuss what makes a good podcast guest.   I chatted with Deirdre Bolton, who has a long background in television and now coaches some of the world's top CEOs for media appearances at Prosek Partners.   We talked about the differences between tv and podcasts and how you can be effective on both. Most people think being a great i...

Peter Kraus has occupied a front-row seat to the transformation of modern finance. His journey began not on a trading floor, but in the rigorous world of accounting at Peat Marwick, where he consulted on the bankruptcy of New York City and the historic breakup of AT&T. That foundation led him to a legendary 22-year run at Goldman Sachs, where he rose from a mortgage securities pioneer to Co-Head o...

Sebastian Mallaby, a British journalist, author, and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is renowned for his expertise in international economics, finance, and in-depth biographies. He has been a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and has authored notable books such as "The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future," "More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making o...

Michael Psaros didn't learn about the power of capital in a textbook; he saw it firsthand in the 1980s as the steel industry collapse threatened to extinguish his hometown of Weirton, West Virginia, which ultimately led him on to a career in private equity.   Michael Psaros is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of KPS Capital Partners, a private equity firm that invests in manufacturing and indus...

What happens when you apply neural networks to 40 years of proprietary investment data? At Russell Investments, Kate El-Hillow is finding out. By bringing AI into the heart of manager research, El-Hillow is moving beyond human intuition to pressure-test the world's best investors through 'million-trade' simulations. The Private Capital Podcast spoke to Kate about how AI is transforming the way Rus...

The term uncorrelated is used so often it tends to lose its meaning.   Today we are talking to someone who seeks out truly uncorrelated assets in niches you've never thought of.   How do you turn a barrel of bourbon into a predictable financial instrument? And why is women's soccer a more compelling bet than a minority stake in an NFL team? Investors often confuse unusual with risky.   According t...

The Private Capital podcast spent a delightful afternoon with François de Visscher, a fourth-generation family member of the Belgian multinational firm Bekaert, which was founded in 1880. François has been a longtime and respected consultant and banker to family offices and family businesses, and it was a real pleasure to listen to his accumulated wisdom.   We spoke about what families get right a...

We think of the markets as complex systems but today's guest André Perold, sees it as a fascinating puzzle of human behavior, asymmetric information, and 'beautiful inefficiencies.' André is a legendary figure in the world of finance.   He has worked with Harry Markowitz, Jack Treynor and Bill Sharpe and is a longtime Harvard Business School professor, a board member at Vanguard, and the co-founde...

Kathryn Leaf is the CEO of Pantheon, a $76 billion private equity firm that has been doing secondaries, among other things, for decades.   We had a deep discussion with her about the dramatic growth in the market.   Her perspectives on the current state of PE secondaries, as well as evergreen and continuation funds, were fascinating, and the market has a ways to go, she notes: "There has been abou...

Today's guest is Avi Kalichstein, the CEO of Hunter Point Capital. He's deeply invested in the rapidly expanding world of private equity stakes. We delve into the influence of his father, a renowned pianist, and his early career at Goldman Sachs, where he met Chris Flowers, who significantly impacted his career. Flowers sent him to Japan to work on revitalizing Shinsei Bank, which was an education...

Lawrence Calcano , CEO of iCapital , began his path to finance   with a surprising fork in the road, a theater audition on the very same day as his Morgan Stanley interview. That moment set the stage for a remarkable career shaped by both creativity and strategy. Lawrence discovered that the same skills that bring a story to life on stage are just as essential in building successful teams and busi...

Partners Capital is a $60 billion asset manager that outsources investments for institutions including family offices, foundations, and endowments.   The firm was founded with particularly sophisticated clients, most of them private equity partners, which I covered in my previous podcast with founder Stan Miranda.   Today we talk to his successor, Arjun Raghavan , who has continued to grow and exp...

Today's guest is Shirl Penney, founder and CEO of Dynasty Financial Partners, which is a comprehensive platform that allows wealth advisors to go independent and form their own RIA.   Shirl's story starts with a thrift store suit and a bus ticket and leads to the helm of this billion-dollar firm.   We start off talking about the inefficiencies and economics of horseracing, Shirl's passion outside...

Adam Waterous is the founder of Waterous Energy Fund, the largest private equity fund in Canada's oil and gas sector.   He gives us a masterclass on the past fifty years of oil and gas investing.   From humble roots and with no background in oil and gas, he pioneered the competitive sales process in Canada, identified the critical shift in the market and technology after 2012, used a value investi...

Hello and welcome to the Private Capital podcast. I'm Joe Reilly, head of Circulus Group, a network for family offices based in Greenwich, Connecticut.   Our next family office summit is on November 20th in New York. It will feature Jose Minaya, Head of Investments at BNY, and former podcast guest Ken Kencel, president and CEO of Churchill Asset Management.   Please subscribe at https://circulus.s...

Today we are traveling through one of the great family business stories, that of Goya Foods, the formation of their family office, and the creation of a free-standing private equity firm that focuses on family businesses called AUA Partners. Andy Unanue is the founder and Managing Partner of AUA Private Equity Partners, an operationally focused, lower middle-market investment firm with expertise i...

There's a vast landscape of valuable but unconventional assets out there, but how do you find them, filter them, and properly value them? What frameworks can you use to understand them and how can you integrate them into a portfolio? Jeff Collins of Cloverlay, a seasoned investor in niche assets for decades, loves to explore these esoteric and overlooked opportunities. We delve into various topics...

Joan Solotar is global head of Blackstone Private Wealth and a member of the firm's management committee. Joan's career tracks the fascinating evolution of Wall Street in the past thirty years.   Joan worked on three notable IPOs: DLJ in 1995, Goldman Sachs in 1999, and Blackstone in 2007, and we discuss the strategic reasons behind them.   She was tapped to lead the development of Blackstone's pr...

Mark Strauch is a founding partner and president of the private equity firm Alpine Investors, known for its unique CEO training program. With a background in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University and subsequent business studies focused on finance, his career spans operational roles at companies like Electronic Arts, entrepreneurial ventures such as the early cloud concept Desktop.com, and...

Today we are going to hear the story of one of the most interesting firms to spring from a significant family office.   JB and Tony Pritzker approached today's guest, Paul Carbone, with the idea of expanding their direct investments into a free-standing firm called Pritzker Private Capital.   Paul takes us through that journey and we discuss the importance of a well-defined value system, the benef...

Jason Mudrick is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of the $3.4 billion Mudrick Capital Management, a firm renowned for its expertise in navigating complex credit situations and distressed opportunities. With a career spanning multiple market cycles, Jason brings a wealth of experience and a unique perspective on the evolving landscape of distressed investing.   Forgoing a law career at Skad...

Today, we're charting the remarkable trajectory of a wealth management powerhouse: Pathstone. Joining us is Matt Fleissig, co-founder and CEO.   Pathstone is a great case study for the major trends in wealth management over the last ten years.   Pathstone's DNA was from the well-known Harris MyCFO, which was the original dot-com family office formed by the founders of Netscape and WebMD.   Pathsto...