Creating
Enduring Value

Blackfield is a boutique private investment office specializing in alternative investments. We advise executives, family offices, founders, and institutions through a disciplined, institutional investment approach spanning public and private markets, focused on portfolio construction, risk awareness, and long-term investment objectives.

Creating Enduring Value

Blackfield is a boutique private investment office specializing in alternative investments. We advise executives, family offices, founders, and institutions through a disciplined, institutional investment approach spanning public and private markets, focused on portfolio construction, risk awareness, and long-term investment objectives.

Tailored Multi-Asset
Portfolios

We actively manage discretionary portfolios utilizing institutional investment managers and diversified global assets, seeking relative value opportunities across asset classes and capital structures.

Capital Preservation
& Compounding

We focus on emphasizing disciplined portfolio construction and long-term capital stewardship, protecting capital first, then compounding it over time. We approach each cycle with discipline, adaptability, and an emphasis on risk control.

What Sets Us
Apart

As seasoned investors, our team’s prior institutional experience includes managing billions of dollars across public and private markets at predecessor firms. Our expertise spans private equity, private credit, and hedge funds, with experience allocating across the asset spectrum in both public and private markets.

High-Touch Adviser
We combine institutional expertise with personal attention, serving as a resource for complex investment analysis, portfolio construction, and ongoing advisory oversight.
Systematic Approach
We apply institutional discipline, documentation, and oversight to portfolio construction and monitoring, applying rigor and oversight to each portfolio.
Institutional-Grade
Our team’s experience spans decades across institutional public and private debt and equity markets, bankruptcy, distressed and special situations, structured finance, and digital assets.

How We Invest
Your Assets

We believe great investment advisors are, first and foremost, exceptional risk allocators, skilled in preserving and growing capital over time.  Our unique and direct experience overseeing and advising institutional assets across the capital structure informs our perspective.

As a result, we allocate client portfolios across alternative investment strategies (asset-backed finance, corporate direct lending, and secondary private equity, growth, and venture), where appropriate, and  based on client objectives and risk tolerance. We actively manage portfolios to produce exceptional long-term outcomes, which is a key differentiator in our practice.

Capital Preservation

Our investment approach emphasizes risk awareness and downside analysis

Discounted Valuation

We look for investments evaluated relative to underlying fundamentals and prevailing market conditions

Asymmetric Returns

We seek investments evaluated based on potential risk-return characteristics

Our Process
The number 1 within a list of process steps..
In-Depth Diligence
We thoroughly research all investments and work directly with any managers to whom we allocate capital.
The number 2 within a list of process steps.
Risk Evaluation
We consider risk of loss by evaluating the asset, its position in the capital structure, loan-to-value, volatility, the manager, structure, and fees, taxes, or ancillary costs that could impact returns.
The number 3 within a list of process steps.
Constant Oversight
We maintain continuous communication with our selected managers and actively monitor all holdings to preserve alignment, risk control, and performance discipline – a cornerstone of our practice.
The number 4 within a list of process steps.
Future Preparation
Sophisticated investment analysis, constant oversight, and reevaluation are how we best prepare for an unknowable future.
Tall grass

Who We Serve

Our original clients were founders, partners, and executives of many of the world's most prestigious private equity and asset management firms. We serve as advisor to investment professionals and sophisticated investors, and offer this same service to accomplished business leaders and owners, legacy families, and select institutions who seek a higher level of sophisticated portfolio impact from their advisor.

What Our Clients Value

We partner with thoughtful clients who value an extra pair of trained eyes, professional oversight & monitoring, performance, creativity, and transparency from their advisor.

Individual Investors
and Families

Leaders, entrepreneurs, and legacy families value independent thinking and expertise. They look to create more time, tax-efficient solutions, diversify concentrated positions, maintain lifestyle, and secure generational wealth.

We provide active institutional-caliber portfolio management informed by risk management principles and long-term planning considerations.

Institutional
Investors

Endowments, Foundations, Family Offices, and RIAs carry unique demands and benchmarks geared for performance.

Our direct experience managing institutional assets makes us hyper-focused on results. We offer investment advisory and portfolio construction services, both for full portfolio mandates, as well as alternative manager roles.

Team

Blackfield benefits from the long, successful track records and pedigree of its senior team, who bring over 50 years of combined experience across public and private debt and equity, structured finance, leveraged buyouts and turnarounds, distressed assets, bankruptcy, restructuring, and digital asset markets.

Ted Lu

FOUNDER & CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER
Ted is an investor and entrepreneur. In 1999, he co-founded Cogent Communications, a multi-billion dollar, publicly traded, high-speed ISP. He later joined The Carlyle Group, where he worked on distressed private equity and credit, and was part of the top-performing team across the firm. Subsequently, Ted was at Atalaya Capital, where he led the traded credit business and managed a significant private credit portfolio. Later at AllianceBernstein, he co-managed a multi-strategy fund across the capital structure. He spent his early career at Morgan Stanley in investment banking.

Ted has allocated billions of client capital as an investor, applying a disciplined investment approach focused on fundamental analysis, capital stewardship, and risk management.

A former Muay Thai fighter and boxer, Ted holds a BA in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and resides in Maryland with his wife and two daughters.

Chris Matthews

MANAGING DIRECTOR, CLIENT SOLUTIONS
Chris brings over 25 years of deep domain expertise and creativity across security assets and markets as a versatile generalist. His extensive experience in full capital structure institutional finance encompasses public and private debt and equity, structured finance, distressed assets, special situations, bankruptcy & restructuring, digital assets, and music IP.

Chris began his career in Lehman Brothers’ Structured Finance Group, then moved into institutional research sales, where he served as a senior member of a nationally top-performing team. He later joined Imperial Capital, a Drexel carve-out and leader in distressed and special situations before transitioning to private investment, digital assets and music finance. His clientele has included many of the world's most notable asset managers.

A native Californian, Chris holds a BA in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and resides with his family in Los Angeles.

Our Name

Our name is inspired by generational wisdom and enduring values connected to legacy. Ted's grandmother's maiden Japanese surname, Kuroda, translates to Blackfield, a metaphor for sophisticated growth and abundance from a place that produces lasting value. We humbly pride ourselves on our acumen, work ethic, transparency, and compassion, all connected to our family namesake.

Arrange an
Introduction

Connect With Us
Let us know how we can serve you. We make ourselves available for discrete investment and portfolio analysis, upon request.

Leadership team