PETER C. CARL
312.307.6346
SUMMARY
Senior investment professional with nearly two decades of experience with investing in and implementing alternative asset management strategies. Responsible for identifying investment opportunities in hedge funds across a wide range of markets, strategies, and trading styles. Experience in all aspects of the investment process, including strategy research and development, portfolio and risk management, execution, marketing and product development, operations and technology development. Able to communicate clearly about complex topics.
APPLICABLE SKILLS
Hedge Fund Screening and Selection: Investing in a portfolio of alternatives demands specialist knowledge and considerable experience. I am responsible for identifying, analyzing, and recommending prospective hedge fund managers for three products and covering more than a dozen hedge fund styles. As a member of the Investment Committee, we meet regularly to review and select managers, discuss asset allocation and risk management, and set policy and process. I write in-depth reviews of existing investments to assess changes to strategy, organization, performance and risk, and monitor our portfolio for changes in performance and risk attributes.
Analysis of Performance and Risk: Using quantitative tools to uncover information about performance and risk through time can help an investor to become more informed, ask better questions, and help them make higher quality decisions. I developed functionality in R that applies current econometric research to analyzing hedge funds and other asset classes for risk, autocorrelation and illiquidity, persistence of returns, style drift, and other areas.
Portfolio Construction: Choosing the size of an investment is a complementary process to choosing the instrument to invest in. Although quantitative approaches are not always appropriate, I've developed and worked with hedge fund style selection optimizers for a fund of funds portfolio, as well as a utility function based optimizer within either a single or multi-style portfolio of hedge funds. I have evaluated or used multiple different optimization methods and objective functions to make sure that the method fits the nature and objectives of the specific portfolio.
Portfolio Hedging: We developed a hedging process and model for a fund of hedge funds to help them reduce or eliminate downside risks caused by specific risk exposures in the portfolio. We estimated the portfolio's exposures to risk factors, proposed possible means of hedging those exposures using liquid derivatives, and estimated the cost of hedging. This capability gives a portfolio manager both the ability to "buy insurance" when there is a good return stream to protect and to react to sudden changes in the markets without having to unwind long horizon positions.
Strategy and Product Development: In hedge fund selection, being able to assess the underlying economic rationale of the investment strategy is critical. I have worked closely with research and investment teams to develop and evaluate investment models, portfolio strategies, and risk parameters for tactical asset allocation, trend following, equity market neutral, statistical arbitrage, and bond basis strategies. We also developed a multi-strategy product to allocate among strategies. I can apply this broad strategy development experience to manager analysis, risk measurement and hedging, or possibly return or style replication.
Portfolio Management and Trade Processing: We developed and licensed a portfolio management and trade processing system that handled 300,000-500,000 trades per month across more than 12 prime/clearing brokers and 50+ prime broker accounts. The system handled P&L, reconciliation, multiple currencies, and multiple asset classes.
Process Discovery, Analysis, and Automation: Productivity growth often hinges upon the ability of an organization to discover, analyze, refine, and automate business processes that were once ad-hoc and manual. I have deep experience in process discovery and analysis in an investment management business. I am able to work closely with or manage technology development teams to translate business needs into functional requirements, write and negotiate specifications, and work closely with developers to ensure that business goals are being met.
EXPERIENCE
WILLIAM BLAIR & CO., Chicago, IL (2006 to Present)
Portfolio Manager
Member of William Blair's fund of hedge funds that currently invests in more than 60 hedge funds across six products. Responsible for identifying, analyzing, recommending and reviewing hedge fund managers covering more than a dozen hedge fund styles. Member of the Investment Committee, which meets regularly to review and select managers, discuss asset allocation and risk management, and set policy and process. Originally hired by Guidance Capital, a Chicago-based Hedge fund of funds that was purchased by William Blair in 2011.
EXPLORER FUND ADVISORS, LLC, Chicago, IL (2002 to 2006)
Chief Operating Officer and Product Development
Developed and launched a global macro hedge fund that uses a quantitative investment strategy based on a cyclical asset allocation process that gradually moves around various asset classes. Responsible for fund operations, technology development, and risk management.
Established and managed the end-to-end investment process.
Lead team of five developers to create a portfolio management system for measuring performance, costs, and risks against expectations. Used a multi-asset class transaction inventory to aggregate, normalize, and reconcile data from multiple prime brokers and provide portfolio- to position-level transparency.
Designed a customized risk overlay product for a $7B European Fund of Funds portfolio made up of 41 funds across Event Driven, Emerging Markets, Fixed Income, Global Macro and Long/Short Equity styles.
BLUEPRINT BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, Chicago, IL (2001 to 2002)
President
Created a boutique consultancy that specialized in strategy and planning for companies seeking capital. Provided probabilistic DCF models with market forecasts, pricing strategy, impact of competition, etc.
UBS WARBURG / O'CONNOR AND ASSOCIATES, Chicago, IL (1986 to 2001)
Executive Director
UBS Warburg is the investment banking division of UBS, A.G., a global bank based in Europe. Originally hired by O'Connor and Associates, a boutique options-trading firm that was purchased by Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC) in 1992. UBS and SBC merged in 1998. Promoted to Executive Director in 2000.
Managed UBS Warburg's exclusive relationship with Prediction Company, an independent research and development firm, to create a large scale, proprietary statistical arbitrage business.
Responsible for assembling and managing production services for a highly-automated trading operation. Lead development of a performance attribution system for communicating performance results to a non-technical user group. Hired and managed middle-office team and built infrastructure for operations support.
Established a group to examine commercialization opportunities for over 30 applications such as Value-at-Risk, collateral and leverage management, and client data infrastructure. Created an integrated risk management service for buy-side money managers to be distributed by prime brokers.
Advised on a $75M portfolio of strategic venture investments in technology companies and financial consortia.
EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, IL (1995)
Master of Business Administration, with concentrations in Business Policy, Finance and Behavioral Science
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, Evanston, IL (1990)
Bachelor of Science, Industrial Engineering/Management Science