Partners Capital splits CIO and CEO roles

The London-based “outsourced investment office” has named Colin Pan chief investment officer amid senior leadership expansion.

Partners Capital, which describes itself as an “outsourced investment office”, has expanded its leadership team with a number of senior promotions, including the appointment of Colin Pan as Chief Investment Officer.

Pan takes over the role from co-founder and chief executive Stan Miranda, who founded the firm 15 years ago and will remain a key member of the firm’s four-person Office of the CIO, alongside Pan, deputy CIO Kamran Moghadam and lead portfolio adviser Arjun Raghavan, according to a statement from the firm. In addition, Miranda will continue to chair the firm’s internal investment committee and remain the senior partner overseeing all private equity investments.

“In order to advance our firm's leadership position in the outsourced investment advisory space, we have taken a number of steps to further expand and diversify our senior management team, including adding four new members to our partner and managing director group and formally separating the roles of CEO and CIO,” said Miranda.

Pan has worked at Partners Capital since 2010, most recently as the firm’s head of manager research. In this role he was responsible for identifying investment opportunities and managers across all asset classes and geographies. He also acts as portfolio manager of the Partners Capital Phoenix Fund II, a 2014 vintage vehicle that invests in liquid credit and private debt opportunities.

In addition to Pan’s appointment, the firm promoted Euan Finlay to partner in London. Finlay joined Partners Capital in 2009 and currently works as co-portfolio manager for the firm’s UK tax efficient multi-asset class strategy and also advises several large EU clients, according to the statement.

Partners Capital also expanded its Boston office. Brendan Corcoran, who advises many of the firm’s largest US institutional clients, has been promoted to partner, Partners Capital US tax efficient investment strategy leader David Shushan has been promoted to managing director and former Blackstone hedge fund managing director Richard Scarinci will join the firm as a partner in September.

Partners Capital has offices in London, Boston, New York, Singapore and Hong Kong and provides investment management services to investment professionals, endowments, foundations, pensions and high net-worth families.

The firm was co-founded by Stan Miranda, a former senior partner with Bain & Company and Evolution Global Partners, an affiliate of venture firm Kleiner Perkins, and Paul Dimitruk, a former securities lawyer who has helped established or held senior management positions at a number of asset management firms, such as Pareto Partners, General Atlantic and Investcorp.

Miranda and Dimitruk established the business to allow general partners at the leading investment and professional firms to “outsource their own family endowments”. And an endowment is the right term. Some clients will have assets upwards of $500 million: “More than can be spent in a lifetime,” Miranda told PEI back in 2010.

The firm now oversees assets of more than $17 billion and its institutional clients include 11 Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, Eton College, the Research Foundation for the State of New York's University System, the Royal Academy of Arts, Milton Academy and the Cancer Research Institute.