Heat-Map Investing

David Turner prefers to build his private equity portfolio by pursuing a small number of GPs in a specific group of desired sectors, as opposed to wading through the hundreds of GPs “come in over the transom.”

In a wide-ranging interview with Privcap, the outspoken Head of Private Equity for the The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America describes his “heat-map” approach to investing, whereby his team identifies strategies, and then top GPs within those strategies, and pursues them over a multi-year period.

Topics discussed include why “most GPs are not differentiated,” why mezzanine has been put on the side-burner but Guardian is on the prowl for the right distressed team, the right way to allocate to the emerging markets, Turner’s analysis of the trend toward separate accounts and which GPs will benefit from this trend, the need for LPs to be more engaged in a public discussion about the future of the asset class and its benefits to the economy, and the hoops a GP must leap through to get his attention.