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Capital introduction: a buyer's guide

What we list in this category, where each entry came from, and the questions worth pressing on before you commit.

Every entry below was recorded from a page we opened, and each carries the source we read. Where we could not establish something it is left blank rather than guessed. Read how this site works if you want the detail.

What we list

Every firm we hold in this category, in one list. A supplier that has run in production for twenty years and one that launched last year appear together and carry the same fields, because that is the comparison a buyer has to make. Each entry's founding year and owner are on its company page where the company states them, and both bear on continuity: long service is evidence a supplier will still be there, and a young supplier may offer capability and pricing the incumbents do not while carrying fewer references at your size.

• 26 Degrees Global Markets — Prime Services for Hedge Funds — Prime brokerage aimed at emerging hedge funds, family offices and proprietary trading firms, with cash and synthetic equity access plus outsourced trading. source
• Agecroft Partners — Third-party marketing firm that raises capital from institutional investors for the hedge fund and private equity managers it represents. source
• Asante Capital Group — Primary fundraising — Runs mid to large cap primary fundraisings and says it has raised both highly established and first time funds. source
• Atlantic-Pacific Capital — Placement and capital formation — Places private equity, credit, real estate and real assets funds, with a published client range of roughly 80 million to 4.5 billion dollars in fund size. source
• BNY Pershing — Prime Brokerage — Clearing and custody firm whose prime brokerage arm serves hedge funds and liquid alternative managers, with both brokerage custody and bank custody available. source
• BTIG — Outsource Trading and Prime Brokerage — States it serves both emerging and established funds, pairing prime brokerage with an outsourced trading desk and a capital introduction team. source
• Beverly Hills Capital — Capital Introduction — Small third party marketer that introduces hedge funds and commodity trading advisers, including start ups, to institutions and wealthy investors for a share of fees. source
• CAIS Platform — Puts third-party alternative investment funds, structured investments and ETFs in front of independent financial advisers and wealth management firms, and is the route by which the asset managers on it reach that channel. source
• Campbell Lutyens — Fund placement — Independent adviser that raises primary capital for private equity, infrastructure and private credit managers, with secondary and GP capital advisory alongside. source
• Capstone Partners — Private fund placement — Raises capital for private equity, credit, real assets and infrastructure managers and takes a deliberately small number of mandates at a time. source
• Eaton Partners — Fund Placement — Places private funds and hedge funds with institutional investors and says it serves first time sponsors as well as established firms. source
• Elm Capital — GP Advisory fund placement — Boutique private capital advisory firm acting as placement agent and secondary adviser from London and Lisbon. source
• Evercore — Private Funds Group — Advises selected private fund sponsors on positioning and investor outreach for primary fundraises, with a separate secondaries advisory team. source
• First Avenue — Private fund placement — Global advisory and placement business for private funds, private companies and secondaries, with offices in London, New York, Hamburg and Hong Kong. source
• Fund Launch Partners — GP seeding and launch advisory — Backs first and second-time managers raising $20m to $200m by matching the GP commitment and providing working capital plus advice on business systems and the fundraising process. source
• Goldman Sachs — Prime Services — One of the largest bank prime brokerage desks, financing and clearing trades for established hedge funds. source
• Hedge Connection — Fintroz virtual capital introduction platform — Online platform and virtual events that connect fund managers with investors, also used by prime brokers and administrators to run their own introductions. source
• Hodes Weill & Associates — Capital advisory firm that raises capital for real estate and real assets investment managers. source
• Jefferies — Prime Brokerage — Self-clearing prime broker that states it works with both emerging and established hedge fund managers, with capital introduction and business consulting alongside. source
• Marex — Prime Brokerage — Full-service institutional prime broker that says it supports emerging, established and mature managers, with execution, custody, financing and back-office support. source
• Monument Group — Primary Fundraisings (placement agent) — Independent placement agent that raises institutional capital for private markets general partners and advises on secondaries. source
• Morgan Stanley — Prime Brokerage — A long-standing bank prime broker serving large hedge funds with financing, stock loan and clearing. source
• Morgan Stanley — Prime Brokerage Capital Introduction — Credited with starting the prime brokerage capital introduction model in 1997, introducing hedge fund clients to institutional investors. source
• PJT Park Hill — Fund Advisory (primary fundraising) — Raises primary capital for private equity, real estate, credit and hedge fund managers, with dedicated teams by asset class. source
• Park Madison Partners — Placement agent that raises private capital for real estate investment managers. source
• PrimeAlpha — Capital raising platform for alternative managers — Investor database, outreach and marketing support for alternative managers, aimed at emerging managers and new launches as well as established funds. source
• Probitas Partners — Alternatives placement — Independent placement firm for alternative managers, working with both established and emerging sponsors on funds from roughly 200 million to over 1 billion dollars. source
• Rede Partners — Private markets placement adviser that helps general partners with primary fundraising and capital solutions. source
• StoneX Group — StoneX Global Prime Services — Multi-asset prime services covering execution, self-clearing and custody, financing, capital introduction and outsourced trading. source
• Threadmark — Private markets placement agent raising capital across real estate, infrastructure, private equity and credit. source
• UBS Prime Services — Prime brokerage for hedge funds covering clearing and custody, financing, securities lending, swaps, capital introduction and business consulting. source
• iConnections — Capital Introduction Platform and Global Alts events — Technology platform plus large in person events that match fund managers with institutional allocators. source

What to ask

These come from the same question bank our request-for-proposal process uses, so a guide and an RFP never drift apart. The four sections below carry the most weight in that bank.

Functional fit

Whether the system does the job for YOUR instruments, markets and volumes — not for the demonstration portfolio. The questions separate what runs in production today from what is on the roadmap, because that distinction disappears in a sales meeting and reappears during implementation. It also asks what still has to be typed in by hand, which every system has and few volunteer.

• Which asset classes does the product support in production today?
• Is there a full audit trail of who changed what and when, and can it be exported?
• Does the system enforce segregation of duties between front and back office?
• Is maker-checker approval supported on material actions, and is it configurable by action type?
• Can a valuation be sourced and approved independently of the people who trade?

Security and resilience

Whether the vendor's security is independently attested or merely asserted. The questions ask for certifications you can read, penetration tests you can see the summary of, and recovery objectives that are written down. Incident history is asked directly, because a vendor that has handled a breach well is often a safer choice than one that has never been tested.

• Which independent attestations do you hold currently?
• Will you provide the most recent report under a non-disclosure agreement?
• Is data encrypted in transit and at rest?
• Is single sign-on supported, and is multi-factor authentication enforced?
• Can your own staff see our data, and is that access logged and reviewable by us?

Compliance and regulatory

Whether the system stands up to your regulator and your auditor. Covers the reporting regimes the product supports directly, whether it can evidence who saw or changed a record, how long records are retained, and where in the world your data physically sits — which is a hard constraint for many firms rather than a preference.

• Can the system evidence to an auditor who saw or changed a given record, and when?
• In which jurisdictions is our data stored and processed?
• Are there any pending criminal matters or debarment proceedings involving the firm, its officers or its managers?
• Which regulatory reporting regimes does the product support directly?
• When a regime changes, is the update included in the licence or charged separately?

Clients and references

Whether they have done this for a firm like yours, and whether those firms stayed. Vendors present client counts and logos readily; they present ATTRITION reluctantly, which is why this section asks for clients lost and migrations completed as separate questions from clients won. Size fit decides more failed implementations than feature lists do, so it is asked directly.

• How many client firms use this product in production today?
• How many of those are of a similar type to our firm?
• How many are within our assets-under-management band?
• How many clients did you LOSE in each of the last three years?
• How many implementations begun in the last three years were abandoned before go-live?

See all 32 firms in Capital introduction · Glossary