Private capital markets have grown substantially in recent decades, raising questions about their role in portfolio construction that professionals like Toby Watson address through practical experience and analytical frameworks.
The expansion of private capital markets presents both opportunities and challenges for investors seeking to allocate assets beyond traditional public securities, yet evaluating these opportunities requires different analytical approaches than publicly traded investments. Toby Watson brings extensive experience from structured finance to assessing private capital opportunities, having spent years analysing complex investment structures and their risk characteristics. His current role as Partner at Rampart Capital involves evaluating private market investments alongside public securities, considering how they contribute to diversified portfolios whilst managing associated risks of illiquidity and complexity.
As Partner at Rampart Capital LLP since February 2020, Toby Watson contributes to the firm’s approach of integrating private capital opportunities within broader portfolio frameworks for wealthy families. The London-based independent office evaluates investments across public and private markets, seeking an appropriate balance between liquidity, return potential, and risk management. Rampart’s investment philosophy emphasises that private capital should complement rather than replace public market exposure, with allocation decisions reflecting individual client circumstances. The firm’s independence allows evaluation of private opportunities based purely on merit rather than distribution agreements or internal product requirements.
Understanding Private Capital Markets
Private capital markets include diverse strategies where investments occur outside public exchanges. Private equity involves acquiring stakes in companies not publicly traded. Venture capital focuses on early-stage companies with high-growth potential. Private credit encompasses direct lending to companies. Real assets include direct ownership of property, infrastructure, or natural resources. These markets have grown substantially, with institutional investors and wealthy families increasingly allocating capital to private opportunities.
Public markets represent a diminishing portion of total business activity, with many successful companies remaining private longer. Private markets potentially offer access to growth stages unavailable in public securities. Illiquidity premiums may enhance returns for investors with appropriate time horizons. However, Toby Watson emphasises that private capital involves distinct risks requiring careful evaluation rather than assuming superiority.
Several characteristics differentiate private from public capital:
- Information asymmetry tends to be greater in private markets
- Valuation occurs periodically rather than continuously
- Illiquidity prevents rapid exit, requiring careful commitment sizing
- Manager selection proves more crucial due to wider performance dispersion
These differences demand different analytical approaches and risk management frameworks that Toby Watson applies when evaluating opportunities.
Investment Approaches to Private Capital
Private equity assessment requires examining strategy employed, manager track record, fund structure including fees, and underlying businesses targeted. Experience from Toby Watson’s Goldman Sachs career in structured finance proves valuable when assessing complex fund structures and understanding how various terms affect actual investor returns.
Private credit has expanded significantly as banks retreated from certain lending activities. Direct lending to mid-market companies can provide attractive risk-adjusted returns with lower correlation to public debt markets. However, credit analysis remains essential—understanding seniority, collateral, and covenant protections becomes crucial for evaluating these opportunities.
Real assets including infrastructure and property offer income streams, often showing inflation linkage. Tangible underlying value provides some downside protection relative to financial assets. However, real assets involve operational challenges and sector-specific dynamics. Geographic and sector diversification helps manage concentrated risks whilst capturing potential benefits.
Private investments require more intensive investigation than public securities:
- Investment due diligence examines opportunity merits and value creation potential
- Operational due diligence assesses manager capabilities and controls
- Legal due diligence reviews fund documents and investor rights
The process demands more time and expertise, with Toby Watson noting that inadequate due diligence represents one of the most common sources of private market disappointments.
Unlike public securities with daily pricing, private investments provide less frequent updates. Investors must actively monitor capital calls, distribution timing, and reported valuations. Understanding how valuations are determined requires scrutiny. The demands of ongoing monitoring mean private capital suits investors who can dedicate necessary attention.
Toby Watson’s Framework for Asset Allocation
Asset allocation should reflect total portfolio context, rather than evaluating private and public opportunities in isolation. Liquidity requirements determine the maximum feasible private capital allocation. Time horizon matters enormously, with longer horizons permitting greater private exposure. Toby Watson emphasises that frameworks should consider these factors systematically rather than following peer allocations divorced from individual circumstances.
Investors needing significant cash flows cannot commit substantial portions to illiquid strategies. Adequate liquid reserves prevent forced sales during market stress. Experience from Toby Watson’s Goldman Sachs career managing substantial positions informs approaches to sizing commitments appropriately relative to overall portfolio capacity and anticipated liquidity needs.
Appropriate private capital allocation varies based on individual circumstances. Institutional investors with perpetual time horizons may commit 30-50% to private markets. Wealthy families typically allocate more modestly, perhaps 15-25%, reflecting greater need for liquidity. Investors approaching retirement should maintain lower private exposure regardless of total wealth.
Private capital commitments create multi-year obligations, requiring careful pacing. Overcommitting during strong markets when capital calls accelerate can create liquidity stress. Building private exposure gradually through vintage year diversification reduces concentration risk. As portfolios mature and private investments generate distributions, these proceeds can fund new commitments or return capital to liquid holdings.
Manager selection proves particularly crucial in private markets, where dispersion between top and bottom performers exceeds that in public markets. Track record examination, team stability assessment, and strategy evaluation all matter. Toby Watson notes that accessing top-tier managers often requires established relationships, creating barriers for individual investors compared to institutional allocators.
Traditional „2 and 20″ structures—2% management fee plus 20% performance fee—remain common in private markets. Understanding fee impact on net returns proves essential, as high fees can eliminate advantages from gross performance. Some structures align interests better through different arrangements, but investors must analyse total fee burden carefully.
Several common errors impair private capital outcomes. Overallocation relative to liquidity needs forces disadvantageous sales. Inadequate diversification across strategies or vintages concentrates risks. Insufficient due diligence leads to poor manager selection. Treating smoothed reported valuations as equivalent to liquid market prices creates a false sense of stability. Toby Watson suggests that avoiding these pitfalls matters as much as identifying attractive opportunities when constructing portfolios spanning public and private capital markets.
Toby Watson on “Level Up! The Musical”: Your Questions About Backing a Creative Theatre Project Answered
Few people bring the kind of structured financial thinking to a theatre production that Toby Watson has quietly contributed to “Level Up! The Musical” — and the results are hard to ignore.
Independent theatre is a world where passion rarely lacks — but sound financial structure often does. Without the right planning, even the most original productions can struggle to move from rehearsal room to stage. It is a problem that creative teams face time and again. Toby Watson, with his extensive background in international finance, represents a different kind of solution. He brings the discipline and foresight needed to turn a bold artistic concept into a production that is not only creatively compelling but financially sustainable from the ground up.
What It Means to Back a Theatre Production: Toby Watson’s Approach
Backing a theatre production goes well beyond writing a cheque. Toby Watson’s involvement in “Level Up!” encompasses financial planning, contract oversight, supplier coordination and strategic decision-making — all handled in a way that protects the creative process rather than constraining it. His role is deliberately unglamorous: he works in the background so that Lucy Watson can lead all creative decisions. That kind of disciplined support is what separates productions that reach their audience from those that fall apart quietly in pre-production.
Theatre, particularly independent theatre, operates in a financially precarious environment. Budgets are tight, timelines compressed, and unexpected costs are almost inevitable. Without someone who understands how to structure costs and plan for contingencies, even a genuinely brilliant show can run into serious trouble. The skills Toby Watson developed throughout his career translate directly into this kind of environment, bringing calm and clarity where it matters most.
His approach is to define his lane clearly and stay in it. Lucy Watson makes all artistic decisions; he takes responsibility for the structures that make those decisions possible. That kind of mutual respect — each person trusting the other’s expertise — is what makes the collaboration work so naturally. Creative and financial priorities do not always align, and managing that tension requires both confidence and the wisdom to know when to step back.
The day-to-day work covers a broad range of responsibilities:
- Structuring and monitoring production budgets to keep spending on track without limiting creative ambition
- Negotiating contracts with venues, technical suppliers and touring partners
- Managing communication between the production team and external stakeholders
- Planning the logistics of touring and coordinating international expansion
Each of these areas demands a different kind of expertise, and having someone with genuine professional experience across all of them is a considerable advantage for any independent production trying to operate at a high level.
Not quite, and the distinction matters. A producer typically has creative input alongside financial responsibility. Toby Watson’s role is more specifically operational and strategic — he ensures the financial framework is sound and the organisational side runs smoothly, without stepping into creative territory. This separation of roles is intentional. It means Lucy Watson retains full creative authority, while Toby Watson ensures the infrastructure around that creativity is as robust as it needs to be.
Behind the Scenes of “Level Up! The Musical”
The musical follows three best friends — Jo, Bobby and Raff — who are accidentally transported into a game world and find themselves competing against one another. The show tackles genuinely current topics — cryptocurrency, carbon credits, digital exhaustion — through chip-tune music, a game-inspired video wall and an energetic ensemble cast. Its creators describe it as sitting somewhere between Jumanji and Inside No. 9, with jazz hands.
The journey was methodical and well-planned. It began with a research and development phase at the Bristol Old Vic in June 2024, followed by a preview at the Waterloo East Theatre in London in July 2025, before the full Edinburgh Fringe run at the Gilded Balloon in August 2025. The production was awarded the Keep It Fringe fund, chosen from over 850 applicants — a meaningful endorsement of both the artistic vision and the operational groundwork behind it.
The Edinburgh Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival and one of the most competitive platforms for new work. Being selected for the Keep It Fringe fund from more than 850 applicants is a genuine achievement, and performing at the Gilded Balloon adds further credibility. For Toby Watson, Edinburgh represented the culmination of months of careful preparation — the moment when all the planning, budgeting and logistical coordination translated into something a live audience could actually experience.
Looking Ahead: The Future of the Production
The collaboration between Lucy and Toby Watson offers a useful template: surrounding a creative project with the right operational expertise is not a compromise — it is what gives the work a real chance. The discipline that Toby Watson’s career at Goldman Sachs instilled, where managing complexity and building long-term structures were daily requirements, does not diminish the art. It enables it.
A German-language version is reportedly in development, with performances planned in Berlin, Vienna and Zurich, and further collaborations under discussion with universities and cultural foundations. Coordinating this kind of international expansion demands exactly the skills that Toby Watson’s Goldman Sachs experience helped sharpen — strategic planning, cross-border communication and the ability to build partnerships that hold up over time.
