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. His concept of return on fees as an investable ratio reflects an architect's instinct to create durable, measurable frameworks rather than follow convention. Organizationally, he designs cross-geographic teams to function as a single office and consciously scales toward smaller manager partnerships, inverting the expected logic of growth. His career itself, from IIT engineering to consulting to hedge funds to OCIO leadership, traces a deliberate construction of complementary competencies. Raghavan leads Partners Capital by building systems meant to outlast any single market regime.
“The base speed is in effect how much risk you want to take in the portfolio. You want to make sure you're diversified across different flavors of market exposure because they will help you in different market environments.”
“If you calibrate the risk appetite wrong, you could quite easily see a situation where the portfolio is down 15 and that just breaches the risk tolerance of a particular client and you get stopped out, and therefore you can't reach your destination on time.”
“I should be able to transplant anyone from any office to another office and they will fit in and work seamlessly from day one. We don't try and build geographic separation.”
Money Maze Podcast: “The $40 Billion Outsourced Investment Office - With Arjun Raghavan, CEO of Partners Capital”
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