Robert Discolo

Robert Thomas Discolo was a New York-based alternatives investor and allocator. He died on March 18, 2024; his obituary lists his full name as Robert Thomas Discolo and notes that he was born in Queens, New York, on July 12, 1961.

Discolo joined River Partners Family Office in 2016 and was described by CFA Society New York as CEO and CIO of a $1 billion-plus registered investment adviser. River Partners Capital Management is an SEC-registered investment adviser based in New York, and public regulatory/profile data describes it as managing private funds and customized advisory portfolios for high-net-worth, family-office, pooled-vehicle, and charitable clients.

Before River Partners, Discolo was Executive Vice President, Investments, at Permal Group. Earlier, he spent 14 years at PineBridge Investments, formerly AIG Investments, where he was Managing Director and Head of the Hedge Fund Solutions Group and was responsible for more than $10 billion in proprietary and client assets in hedge funds and other alternatives. He also held senior alternatives roles at Bank Julius Baer, worked in partnership financing at Merrill Lynch, and began his career at Drexel Burnham Lambert in fund services.

He held an MBA from Pace University’s Lubin School of Business and a B.S. in Accounting from St. John’s University. Public bios describe him as a CFA and CAIA charterholder and CPA, and as a frequent conference speaker and author on alternative investing.

• Discolo’s public investing record is primarily as an alternatives allocator, not as a seed-stage angel investor. River Partners’ advisory materials describe customized asset allocation and selection of institutional-quality third-party managers across equities, fixed income, hedge funds, commodities, venture capital, and private equity.
• He emphasized manager quality and alignment. In a 2005 interview, he said hedge funds were “a talent pool, not an asset class” and that the key was “to have the right people.”
• He preferred diversified, low-correlation hedge-fund portfolios over paying high fees for market beta. In the same interview, he described the goal as “competitive returns, competitive risk and low correlation.”
• He was interested in less-efficient markets, especially Asia. He said Asia was attractive because it was “less crowded than the U.S. or Europe” and favored Asian long/short equity because inefficiencies could create both winners and losers.
• He had experience seeding hedge-fund managers. AIG Investments’ 2008 partnership with Larch Lane targeted allocations of $50 million to $200 million per deal for start-up, young, or restructuring hedge funds, with Discolo quoted as viewing seeding as an emerging institutional allocation.