About

The Hurdle Rate is a set of essays on the state of markets and where capital is being allocated. Most companies are private, so a lot of it covers private markets, venture and AI. In investing, a hurdle rate is the return a fund has to beat before its manager earns a share of the profits. Each essay puts a market story through a similar test, checking it against the numbers and against how investors actually behave.

Writing them is a way to crystallise my thinking and to question the consensus. They won’t always be right, and some will be contrarian, but they help me think differently about markets, and I hope they do the same for the reader.

I’ve spent nine years in asset management, working with family offices, endowments, corporates and OCIO managers. My work centres on asset allocation and manager selection: how institutional investors set return and liquidity objectives, weigh asset classes against each other, and decide when to commit capital. I studied at the London School of Economics, am a CFA charterholder and sit on the AIMSE Europe Advisory Council.

Views are my own and not investment advice.