Almost every book about private markets is written from the general partner's chair. This one is written from yours.
If you commit institutional capital to private equity, private credit, infrastructure, real estate, or venture funds, your job is not to pick investments. It is to choose managers you cannot fire, size commitments you cannot reverse, and then live with those decisions for a decade or more while a board asks every quarter why the numbers look the way they do. The commitment, not the investment, is the decision - and almost nothing written for allocators treats it that way.
The Private Markets Limited Partner is a complete working manual for that job. It moves in the order the work actually happens: what the LP mandate is and how governance either protects or sabotages it; the arithmetic of fees, waterfalls, and the J-curve, taught so you can perform it yourself; how to design a target portfolio and reach it through a pacing model rather than good intentions; how to keep a program liquid enough to survive a downturn; how to source, screen, and diligence managers; which terms are worth your scarce negotiating leverage; and how to monitor, measure, and manage what you own.
Inside the book
- Fifteen chapters covering the full allocation cycle, from investment policy to tail-end management.
- Worked examples with the arithmetic shown - pacing models, gross-to-net bridges, waterfalls, performance attribution, and liquidity stress tests you can build rather than merely read about.
- A complete case study following one institution from diagnosis to a single commitment decision, memo and committee debate included.
- A ninety-day plan for anyone newly responsible for a private markets program.
- Five working appendices: a staged manager selection checklist, an investment committee memo skeleton, a due diligence question bank, an annual operating calendar, and a fifty-term glossary.
Who it is for
Investment officers and portfolio managers at pension plans, insurers, endowments, foundations, and sovereign funds; family offices; funds of funds and multi-manager platforms; private bank and wealth platform diligence teams; investment consultants; trustees and committee members; and general partners who want to understand how they are being assessed.
The market cycle will move, the regulation will change, and the fashionable strategy will be replaced. The method in this book is built to outlast all three.
