GCW works with international clients and invests globally

Our team offers a distinctive blend of deep investment expertise and academic insight together with a broad cross asset skillset

About us
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Founding Principles

We designed GCW to succeed where the investment management industry often fails.

Our aim is to deliver superior investment performance. We do not dilute our focus or our culture with non-investment objectives.

Our global team elevates clients beyond conflicts of interests common to bank platforms, beyond the adverse investment selection that may arise from reliance on personal networks, and beyond the home country bias of many independent asset managers.

David Bizer
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
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We manage relationships as investment professionals rather than manage investments as relationship managers.

We strive to align interests with our clients while providing transparency and accountability, so that we can evaluate success together.

Siggi Thorkelsson
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
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Meet the team

Clients select a model for working with GCW that is consistent with their needs, circumstances, and overall portfolio objectives

Customised Portfolios

We work selectively with individuals and families who wish to preserve and enhance their wealth, constructing portfolios fully customised to personal circumstances and objectives.

Funds

We offer pooled, private vehicles for families and institutions wishing to access similar investments and strategies as those provided to Customised Portfolio clients.

Customised Fund Solutions

We offer a blended approach that combines managing low-cost liquid asset accounts in conjunction with investments in our pooled vehicles, customising portfolio risk to client preferences and objectives.

Our Portfolio Objective is to Deliver Alpha

We strive to outperform portfolios of similar risks. That outperformance is known as “alpha”.

Because the search for alpha is a zero-sum game (just as not all sports teams in a league can have a winning record), alpha is difficult to find, hard to access when found, and may be transient.

We search for alpha predominantly in less actively- traded, less “picked over” markets, where the special skills required to navigate those markets create implicit barriers to entry, increase expected return and skew the odds of winning in our favour.

About us
Delivery

We aim to deliver alpha net of all fees and expenses. Our portfolio construction, tailored to the client mandate, determines the amount of expected alpha that we target.

Technology

GCW proprietary tools  help us to identify expected alpha while avoiding common pitfalls, such as mistaking total return for alpha.

After-Tax Mindset

We evaluate the merits of investments on an after-tax basis.

Access

The combined experiences of our global team extend our reach to originate compelling investment opportunities.

Our mission is founded on achieving long-term outperformance

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Management Team

We manage relationships as investment professionals rather than manage investments as relationship managers. We are not distracted by other missions.
Meet the team

Access and Sourcing

Our team's backgrounds and ability to help sponsors solve problems makes us attractive LPs.

Our professional networks and geographically distributed team afford GCW an effective scale that exceeds that of much larger firms.

We have been able to access hard-closed funds and negotiate preferred terms.

Our avoidance of traditional asset class silos enables our best investment ideas, rather than internal priorities, to prevail in Investment Committee decisions.

GCW works with international
clients and invests globally
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©2023  GCW  Global  Customised  Wealth  LLP  All  rights  reserved.
1 Knightsbridge Green, 5th Floor, London SW1X 7QA
GCW Global Customised Wealth LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration with the SEC does not imply a level of skill or training.

David Bizer

Managing Partner

Dave Bizer is a co-founder of GCW Global Customised Wealth where he oversees all aspects of the business.

Prior to founding GCW, Dave was a Managing Partner at Jasper Ridge Partners, a California-based investment manager, where he contributed to all aspects of the firm’s investment strategy, with particular focus on portfolio construction, the firm’s risk factor overlay program and new product development. Dave serves on the Board of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and on the London School of Economics North American Advisory Board.

Previously, Dave served on Nomura’s Wholesale Executive Committee and held various senior management positions at Lehman Brothers. Dave has served on the Council of Economic Advisers under two U.S. Presidents. Additionally, he was a visiting assistant professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a visiting assistant professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Dave has published articles in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Monetary Economics, among other periodicals and publications. Dave received his Ph.D. and MA in Economics from Stanford University and an AB from the University of Michigan.

Siggi Thorkelsson

Managing Partner

Siggi Thorkelsson is a co-founder of GCW Global Customised Wealth where he oversees all aspects of the business.

Siggi is also the co-founder and Chairman of Fossar Investment Bank, an investment bank based in Iceland. Prior to founding Fossar, Siggi had over 20 years experience in the banking and securities industry having held leadership positions at investment banks in New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Most recently, he was Head of Equities EMEA at Barclays Capital in London and a Director of Barclays Capital Securities Limited. Previously he was Head of Equities Asia Pacific including Japan at Barclays and Nomura after having held a number of senior roles at Lehman Brothers.

Siggi has served as a Director of various listed and unlisted companies in Iceland, UK and Switzerland. He was appointed by the Government of Iceland, the Chairman of the government‘s Advisory Committee on the elimination of currency controls in the aftermath of financial crises in Iceland.

Siggi splits his time between the UK and Iceland where he is also involved in a number of cultural activities. Siggi holds a B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Iceland and an M.Sc. degree in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from Stanford University.