The Allocator's Brief.
A single-mandate engagement. We write the brief the desk would have written on your fund, then sit with you through every meeting until the commitments are signed.
§ 01 — What it is
What it is.
This is the mandate service — one of three, and the only one built around a raise. A monthly retainer, twelve weeks minimum, and for those twelve weeks your raise is one of three on the desk. There is no junior version of this engagement, and no one you get handed off to.
A placement agent takes one to two percent of whatever you close, plus a tail that follows the fund for years. We take a monthly fee that stops the month after the mandate closes. That difference shows up in the room: nobody here needs your raise to close in order to get paid, so you get told when it is not going to.
You are not paying for an introduction. You are paying for the half hour after you leave the room, when the desk writes down what it actually thought.
§ 02 — How it works
How it works.
- 1
First, we meet.
In your office or ours, in person. We go through the raise, the timing, and which allocators are actually awake for this strategy right now. If it is the wrong quarter for your fund, we say so and you owe us nothing.
- 2
Then we take the materials apart.
Deck, data room, track record, and the answers your team gives when someone pushes. We mark every place a selection desk will stop, and we rebuild those pages before anyone at the allocator sees them.
- 3
We sit in the meetings.
Every named meeting, in person. Flights to the Gulf come out of our fee, not yours. The question that decides the cheque does not get answered over video.
- 4
We stay until it is decided.
Signed or declined, we are there for it. The retainer stops the month after the mandate closes. There is no tail.
Twelve weeks, and at the end of them you know exactly why the answer was yes or no. Most managers never find that out.
§ 03 — Who it is for
Who it is for.
Private real estate managers raising $200m or more who want Gulf capital that does not turn up at conferences.
Real estate equity.
Core through opportunistic. Most often a manager whose track record reads well at home and means nothing yet in the Gulf.
Real estate credit.
Senior secured, mezzanine, whole loan. The corner of real estate where Gulf appetite has grown fastest.
Real estate structured.
JVs, club deals, single-asset vehicles, programmatic co-invest. Structures built so a sovereign can take a position without taking a blind pool.
§ 04 — What you would pay elsewhere
The other route, costed honestly.
Most managers in your position hire a placement agent. Here is what that costs, next to what this costs.
| Placement agent | The Brief | |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Retainer + 2% success + 0.25–1% tail | Monthly retainer only |
| On a $200m raise | $8m–$13m over fund life | Declared in advance, capped before signature |
| Tail | 12–36 months post-engagement | None |
| Success fee | 1.5–2.5% of committed capital | None |
| Concurrent clients | Unbounded | 3 maximum |
§ 05 — Terms
Pricing.
A monthly retainer plus expenses, quoted as one number before you sign anything. No success fee. No back end. Nothing that follows you into your next fund.
Twelve mandates a year, three at a time, twelve weeks minimum. One fund per GCC allocator per year, so your raise never competes with ours.