Position Overview:Morgan Stanley Outsourced Chief Investment Office, or OCIO, and Morgan Stanley Family Office, or MSFO, partner with Morgan Stanley Financial Advisors across all channels to deliver portfolio management solutions to clients of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
Position Summary:The Institutional Portfolio Solutions, or IPS, team is uniquely situated between two fast-growing and strategically important client channels within Morgan Stanley Wealth Management: OCIO and MSFO. These programs partner with Financial Advisors to offer discretionary and non-discretionary portfolio management services to institutional and private clients, including defined benefit plans, endowments, foundations, ultra-high-net-worth families, family offices, and other sophisticated investors.
The IPS team provides customized portfolio solutions across alternative and liquid investments and is responsible for making recommendations on portfolio construction, asset allocation, and manager selection across a broad spectrum of asset classes.
This Vice President role will focus primarily on
hedge funds and liquid alternative investments. The successful candidate must have significant experience in
both:
Sourcing, evaluating, and conducting due diligence on hedge fund managers across multiple strategies; and
Constructing customized hedge fund portfolios for institutional, family office, ultra-high-net-worth, or other sophisticated client portfolios.
The role requires the ability to identify compelling hedge fund opportunities, evaluate managers through an institutional-quality due diligence process, and translate those views into client-specific portfolio recommendations across strategy allocation, manager selection, sizing, liquidity profile, risk management, and implementation sequencing. This role will be client-facing and require the ability to professionally and succinctly discuss our philosophy and process, market views, portfolio updates and proposals.
Candidates with experience only in manager research or only in asset allocation / portfolio construction are unlikely to be a fit for this role. The portfolio manager / hedge fund allocator component is critical to success.Core Responsibilities:- Serve as a subject matter expert and portfolio manager for hedge funds and liquid alternative investments within OCIO and MSFO client portfolios.
- Source, evaluate, and conduct due diligence on hedge fund managers across strategies, including equity long/short, event-driven, credit, relative value, global macro, multi-strategy, systematic, merger arbitrage, convertible arbitrage, volatility, opportunistic, and other liquid alternative strategies.
- Maintain and expand a relevant network across the hedge fund ecosystem, including investment managers, allocators, consultants, prime brokerage contacts, capital introduction teams, and other market participants.
- Build customized hedge fund portfolios for institutional, family office, ultra-high-net-worth, and other sophisticated clients, including recommendations on strategy allocation, manager selection, position sizing, liquidity profile, implementation sequencing, and portfolio-level risk management.
- Evaluate hedge fund portfolios in the context of total client asset allocation, including public markets, private markets, liquidity needs, concentration risks, client-specific constraints, and existing portfolio exposures.
- Partner with OCIO and MSFO client segment teams and Financial Advisors to support prospective and existing client engagements, including new mandate opportunities, portfolio reviews, investment proposals, and client-specific hedge fund recommendations.
- Participate in recurring OCIO and MSFO investment meetings to discuss asset allocation, hedge fund market views, manager selection, portfolio positioning, forward pipeline opportunities, and potential portfolio changes.
- Prepare investment analyses, manager recommendations, market updates, portfolio reviews, and client-facing materials related to hedge fund and liquid alternative allocations.
- Monitor hedge fund performance, exposures, liquidity, risk characteristics, factor sensitivities, attribution, manager-specific developments, and portfolio-level contributions across OCIO and MSFO client allocations.
- Actively participate in meetings with external hedge fund managers and represent OCIO/MSFO in manager diligence, portfolio monitoring, and pipeline review discussions.
- Help drive strategic initiatives to enhance hedge fund portfolio construction, manager research, analytics, reporting, and implementation capabilities across OCIO and MSFO.
- Liaise with key internal stakeholders, partner groups, and control functions to support business initiatives, investment implementation, governance processes, and client solutions.
- Develop, enhance, or automate analytical tools, financial models, reporting processes, and data workflows to support hedge fund due diligence, portfolio construction, monitoring, and reporting.
Required Qualifications:- Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business Administration, or a related field.
- 7+ years of investment-related experience with a significant focus on hedge funds, preferably at a fund of funds, OCIO platform, institutional investment consultant, endowment, foundation, family office, alternative investment platform, or other allocator-oriented investment organization.
- Demonstrated experience sourcing hedge fund managers and maintaining a relevant network across the hedge fund manager universe.
- Demonstrated experience conducting institutional-quality hedge fund due diligence, including analysis of investment process, portfolio construction, risk management, performance attribution, liquidity, terms, operational considerations, organizational quality, and alignment of interests.
- Demonstrated experience building customized hedge fund portfolios, including manager selection, strategy allocation, position sizing, liquidity design, risk budgeting, portfolio monitoring, and rebalancing recommendations.
- Strong understanding of hedge fund strategies, including equity long/short, event-driven, credit, relative value, global macro, multi-strategy, systematic, and other liquid alternative strategies.
- Strong understanding of global capital markets, asset allocation, manager selection, modern portfolio theory, portfolio construction, performance analysis, risk management, and the broader alternative investment landscape.
- Ability to evaluate hedge fund investments at both the manager level and the total portfolio level.
- Ability to translate complex hedge fund strategy, risk, liquidity, and portfolio construction concepts into clear recommendations for sophisticated clients, Financial Advisors, investment committees, and internal stakeholders.
- Strong analytical and quantitative skills, with the ability to assess fund performance, exposures, drawdown behavior, liquidity, correlation, factor sensitivities, attribution, and portfolio-level risk.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Strong organizational and project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.
- High degree of professional accountability, attention to detail, intellectual curiosity, and judgment.
- Proactive, hard-working, collaborative, and comfortable operating within a close-knit investment team.
Preferred Qualifications:- CFA, CAIA, MBA, or other relevant advanced degree or professional certification.
- Experience managing or advising hedge fund-of-funds portfolios, customized hedge fund mandates, OCIO portfolios, family office hedge fund allocations, or institutional alternatives portfolios.
- Experience presenting hedge fund recommendations, portfolio construction views, and manager selection decisions to investment committees, sophisticated clients, or senior internal stakeholders.
- Experience working with portfolio analytics, exposure reporting, factor analysis, liquidity analysis, risk management tools, and performance attribution frameworks.
- Experience analyzing co-mingled hedge fund-of-funds portfolios, customized separate account portfolios, or multi-manager hedge fund programs.
- Advanced Excel skills; experience with Bloomberg, FactSet, VBA, Python, APIs, portfolio analytics platforms, or similar tools is a plus.
Technical and Analytical Skills:The successful candidate should be comfortable working with quantitative and qualitative investment information and should be able to synthesize complex hedge fund data into actionable portfolio recommendations. Relevant technical capabilities may include:
- Performance and attribution analysis
- Exposure and factor analysis
- Liquidity and terms analysis
- Drawdown and stress scenario analysis
- Portfolio construction and optimization tools
- Manager comparison frameworks
- Excel-based modeling and reporting
- Bloomberg, FactSet, VBA, Python, APIs, or similar tools
While technical skills are important, the primary requirement for this role is demonstrated hedge fund allocator experience, including both manager sourcing/diligence and customized portfolio construction.
Licenses:SIE, Series 7, Series 63, and Series 65, or Series 66, will be required for the role. Candidates who do not already hold these licenses will be required to obtain them after being hired within a reasonable timeframe.
Expected base pay rate for the role will be between $115,000 and $205,000 per year at the commencement of employment. However, base pay if hired will be determined on an individualized basis and is only part of the total compensation package, which, depending on the position, may also include commission earnings, incentive compensation, discretionary bonuses, other short- and long-term incentive packages, and other Morgan Stanley-sponsored benefit programs.
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