Episode summary
Episode 360: Richard Tomlinson of LPPI - New Frontiers and the Promise of Doing More Together
The Fiftyfaces Podcast
· · 31 min · Hosts: Aoifinn Devitt · Guests: Richard Tomlinson
Summary
Richard Tomlinson traces his investing style back to an entrepreneurial upbringing, engineering studies at Cambridge in the late 1990s, and early business experiments that taught him to be practical, cross-functional, and comfortable with responsibility. He says those experiences shaped a career that moved from event-development financial models to GNI Fund Management, Old Mutual, Albourne, and eventually Local Pensions Partnership Investments.
He argues that good investing is about humility, simplicity, and clear boundaries: don’t try to be too clever, stay diversified, know where you genuinely have edge, and expect the market to punish overconfidence. He also says the job has become harder over time, so investors must keep improving rather than rely on old playbooks.
On LPPI’s expansion, Tomlinson says the short-term priority is to do what was promised for both existing and new partner funds, while the longer-term goal is to build a durable organization and more leaders below him. He sees value in learning from the Canadian model, especially delegation and some internalization, but says LPPI should avoid areas like credit, overseas offices, and some private equity strategies where it lacks scale, expertise, or fit. He also says sustainability and local investing require honest trade-offs rather than slogans.
Key takeaways
- Tomlinson says LPPI’s near-term job is simple: deliver what was promised to the existing and new partner funds.
- He believes LPPI should internalize only where it can be credible, such as some infrastructure, but not in credit or other scale-dependent strategies.
- He says most LGPS portfolios should treat sustainability as integrated in the core portfolio, with separate satellite mandates for local or impact goals.
- Tomlinson argues that supposed passive strategies often contain major active choices and deserve much more intellectual honesty.
- His investing creed is to stay humble, size positions carefully, and assume that if something can go wrong, it probably will.
Notable quotes
“don't try and be too clever. Yeah. When you're young, you think you know it all and you build these models and tools”
“stay diversified look long term and think very carefully about what your mandate is and how you align your activity”
“Short-term is do what we said we would do”
“you can have it all and I don't have to worry about what takes primacy financial return or ESG it's just all all doesn't make sense”
How the episode opens
A CIO role is one of those roles of an asset owner where your age is your tailwind in some ways. Just there are so many mistakes that you can make. The more mistakes you've made in the past, the better you can do your job going forward.
So the big one for me is keep it simple, stupid, KS and if something can go wrong, it probably will go wrong and think about the different scenarios. So it's it's things around those things are my big learnings as an investor. I'm Ethan Devit and welcome to the 50 Faces podcast.
A podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. This series is supported by Benefit Street Partners. Benefit Street Partners is a leading global alternative credit asset manager offering clients investment solutions across a broad range of complimentary credit strategies including direct lending special situations structured credit high yield bonds leverage loans and commercial real estate debt and equity.
This episode is also supported by PIMCO a global leader in active fixed income with deep expertise across public and private markets. PIMCO invests their clients capital in income and credit opportunities that span the liquidity spectrum, leveraging their decades of expertise navigating complex debt markets. I'm joined today by Richard Tomlinson, who's chief investment officer at Local Pensions Partnership Investments.
He was previously head of portfolio advisory and a partner at Alorn where he spent over six years and prior to that was head of multi strategy and absolute return at Old Mutual Asset Managers. Welcome Richard. Thanks for joining me today.
Thank you Aan. Thank you for having me on the show. Well, we've known each other certainly since your time at Local Pensions Partnership Investments, but I'd love if you could just take us back into your background a little bit to talk about what brought you to finance, but also the experiences you had within different kinds of firms that maybe informed your approach today.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- pension investments
- lppl expansion
- advisory responsibilities
- governance and accountability
- private credit and fixed income
Companies and tickers mentioned
- BEN
- Local Pensions Partnership Investments
- Albourne
- Old Mutual Asset Managers
- Benefit Street Partners
- Franklin Templeton
- PIMCO
Watch the episode
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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The Fiftyfaces Podcast, this episode and its artwork belong to Aoifinn Devitt. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
