Captive Fund

A captive fund is a private fund that is managed for a select group of investors or in affiliation with a single entity. It is often created for investment by employees. Captive funds can also be created by companies to manage targeted investments, such as venture capital assets invested in private market companies.

Captive funds are not publicly offered or traded on exchanges. Therefore, they typically do not get a lot of media attention. However, these funds can be created with a range of objectives similar to publicly traded funds. Captive funds are often developed as an employee benefit allowing for investment from some or all of the company’s employees depending on its benefit focus and structure. The Medallion Fund for Renaissance Technologies employees is one example of an employee captive fund. Captive funds can also be used for managing venture capital investments.

Captive funds for employees seek to broaden the employee benefits at a company. Captive funds can be similar to Z-share funds, which are typically used by mutual fund companies allowing employees to invest in a single share class of the portfolio. Captive funds can be managed internally by designated trustees. They can also be managed by an institutional investment manager. As non-registered private funds, captive funds have broad latitude in their structuring and investment objectives.

The Medallion Fund is a legendary capital fund invested in by the employees of Renaissance Technologies. Founded by James Simmons, Renaissance Technologies is a hedge fund focused on quantitative investing. The company has 290 employees with $84 billion in assets under management as of 2018, including the Medallion Fund. Other funds include the Institutional Equities Fund and Institutional Diversified Alpha Fund. The Medallion Fund uses its own proprietary quantitative investing strategy for the Fund and is well known for maintaining one of the best track records for returns in investing history.

Many companies establish captive funds to build partnerships and make private market venture capital investments. Funds are usually supported by corporate capital. They can be managed and structured in various ways.

Alphabet, Inc., has a captive fund portfolio managed by Google Ventures. Google Ventures is a subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc., focused primarily on managing a broad investment portfolio that seeks to invest in growing technology companies.

Healthcare is another sector that is involved with venture capital funding and research. Healthcare companies with captive funds for venture capital investing include Eli Lilly and Company, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, Biogen and Ascension Health.