Four partners
The people who run the money, and sign the reports.
Halbrook is run by four people. The newest joined in 2015, the longest-serving in 2004. Each is named against the mandate or the function they answer for, so a client knows who made a decision and who checked it.
Eleanor Vance
Chief Investment Officer
Runs Global Equity. Twelve holdings, one change since 2019.
Marcus Thorne
Head of Credit
Runs Fixed Income and Credit. Reads every covenant himself.
Priya Raghunathan
Head of Multi-Asset
Rebalances on a printed calendar, never on news.
James Okonkwo
Chief Operating Officer
Signs every client statement. Has done since 2004.
Eleanor Vance
Chief Investment Officer. Runs Global Equity.
At Halbrook since 2009.
Twenty-two years in developed-market equity before Halbrook, most of them running one concentrated portfolio for a pension manager in Edinburgh. She joined in 2009 and took over Global Equity the following year. The mandate is GBP 1.1bn at 31 March 2026 and has returned 15.4% a year net over ten years.
She reads company accounts before the market opens and meets a management team twice a year. Global Equity holds twelve companies. She has changed one holding since 2019. Her view is that most turnover is a fee paid for feeling busy, and that the hardest part of the job is doing nothing on purpose.
I have held one of those twelve for fifteen years. Every year someone asks whether I have checked it. Every year, yes.
Marcus Thorne
Head of Credit. Runs Fixed Income and Credit.
At Halbrook since 2011.
Nine years on the credit desk of a Dutch bank, the last four running it. He joined Halbrook in 2011 and took over Fixed Income and Credit in 2013. The mandate is GBP 780m at 31 March 2026 and has returned 6.4% a year net over ten years, with one default in that period.
He spends most of the week reading covenants. He will not buy a bond whose documents he has not read himself, which caps the book at around seventy issuers and keeps two analysts busy. His view is that credit losses come from the paperwork, not the price.
Nobody loses money on a bond because the coupon was small. They lose it in the documents, on page forty.
Priya Raghunathan
Head of Multi-Asset.
At Halbrook since 2015.
Eight years on the investment team of a university endowment, the last three responsible for its allocation. She joined Halbrook in 2015 to run Multi-Asset, then GBP 210m. It is GBP 520m at 31 March 2026 and has returned 9.5% a year net over ten years. All of that record is hers.
She sets the allocation between equities, credit and cash, and rebalances on a fixed calendar rather than on news. The calendar is printed in each quarterly report. She holds that the allocation decision is worth more than any single security pick, and that most managers spend their time on the wrong one.
The rebalance is on the calendar. If it is a bad week, it is still on the calendar. That is the whole point.
James Okonkwo
Chief Operating Officer. Operations, compliance and client reporting.
At Halbrook since 2004.
He joined in 2004 from the fund administration arm of a custodian bank, where he had spent six years reconciling other managers’ books. He is the longest-serving partner. Operations, compliance and client reporting all report to him, and he has run them through two regulators and one change of firm structure.
Every client statement leaves the building with his signature on it. He checks the figures against the custodian record himself, each quarter, and has since 2004. His view is that a return nobody has reconciled is a rumour, and that the reporting desk is where a firm’s honesty gets tested.
I sign the statement. If a number is wrong, it is my name on it, not a spreadsheet.
A small firm on purpose
How we hire
Halbrook employs nineteen people. Four are partners. The firm has hired eleven people in ten years and lost four, two of them to retirement. A new hire spends the first year on reconciliation before touching a portfolio. The firm would rather someone learn the books before they are asked for a view.
The team is small because the mandates are. Twelve companies, 71 issuers and one allocation calendar do not need a floor of analysts. They need people who will still be here to answer for them in ten years. There are no open positions. If that changes it will be published here, with a date.
Ask for the most recent quarterly report.
We will send it the same day. There is no call to sit through first.
Request a briefing