Patrick O'Shaughnessy

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My guest today is Peter Lackley.

Peter is the chief investment officer for private investments at SCS Financial and has built one of the most respected private equity allocation platforms in wealth management, overseeing $50 billion for ultra high net worth families and earning the same access as top tier endowments to the world's best managers.

He shares how SES's pooled vehicle structure enables them to compete with institutional giants for the best funds, avoiding the adverse selection that plagues most wealth platforms.

Peter shares his investment philosophy across lower market buyouts, emerging independent sponsors, and early bets on category-defining managers like Thrive Capital and Shore Capital.

We discuss what separates exceptional private equity managers, the evolution of the industry towards AI-powered strategies, and private markets going mainstream.

Please enjoy this conversation with Peter Lacalade.

To start, I really enjoy the line private equity is a force for good.

People are going to be surprised to hear that.

Why do you think that's true?

What they're doing is they're changing system settings in a way that would be impossible probably in public markets or without real total control over the business.

Is that the reason that it's possible?

So one idea that I think is really interesting around this private equity thing and the scope of your business is to understand your specific platform, how it is so similar to all the other institutional allocator platforms in size and sophistication.

And that that then can fuel a better wealth management experience for the families that trust SES and now the broader ecosystem that you're going to serve the ultra high net worth or whatever.

One of the reasons that wealth management sucks is there's a horrible adverse selection problem.

And so any alts that they get suck because they last.

You've built something different, which is, to me, one of the most interesting things about SES, which is like, oh, it's wealth management.

But you're in the same breath as these important bellwether LPs that other people look to to see what's interesting and new.