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Creating Enduring Value

Blackfield is a boutique, private investment office dedicated to delivering tailored investment solutions and advice that create lasting value. We are focused on producing exceptional service and long-term outcomes for individual investors, families, and institutions.

Creating Enduring Value

Blackfield is a boutique, private investment office dedicated to delivering tailored investment solutions and advice that create lasting value. We are focused on producing exceptional service and long-term outcomes for individual investors, families, and institutions.

Tailored Multi-Asset
Portfolios

We work with clients to craft sophisticated discretionary and advisory portfolios, consisting of top tier investment managers and diversified assets.

Optimal Portfolio
Structuring

Encompassing commingled funds, direct investments, separately managed accounts, and insurance dedicated funds - executed in close coordination with tax, legal, and estate planning teams.

What Sets Us
Apart

As seasoned investors, we've directly managed billions of dollars in institutional assets, delivering a proven track record of excellence and top-tier performance. 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 decisions, creative financing solutions, and portfolio management.
Systematic Approach
We are focused on results, applying institutional rigor and oversight to each portfolio.
Seasoned Experience
Our breadth of experience spans decades in institutional public and private debt and equity, 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 invest heavily across alternatives (private credit, interval funds, secondary private equity), which is a key differentiator in our practice. We actively manage portfolios to produce exceptional long-term outcomes.

Capital Preservation

Our first priority is always to protect client assets.

Discounted Valuation

We look for investments available at a discount to intrinsic value.

Asymmetric Returns

We seek investments with significantly greater expected upside vs. downside.

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 investment managers - 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 money manager to the money managers, 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 tax-efficient solutions, diversify concentrated positions, maintain lifestyle, and secure generational wealth.

We provide institutional expertise and attention through portfolio management and monitoring, freeing up time for purpose, philanthropy, and family.

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 full OCIO and external asset manager 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. His focus on deep fundamental analysis, capital preservation, and risk management has consistently delivered top performance across all of his funds.

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 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 at Lehman Brothers' globally leading structured finance group before transitioning to equities. There, he partnered with the top-performing team in institutional research sales, which was ranked as the #1 sales group among all banks. He later joined Imperial Capital, a Drexel carve-out and leader in distressed and special situations. 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