Dell Family Office To Diversify Portfolio As Big Payday Looms

(Bloomberg) -- Alisa Mall, the chief investment officer for Michael Dell's family office, is looking to diversify her portfolio as the firm is poised to absorb an influx of cash and stock that together is worth more than $20 billion.   

The money will come in after Broadcom Inc. closes on its $61 billion purchase of cloud-computing company VMware Inc., which counts Dell as its largest shareholder with a 36% stake. If the deal is approved by European regulators, Dell, 58, will receive half his payout in shares and about $10 billion in cash. Dell is worth about $54 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 

“What I'm grappling with is that we have this major liquidity event, so how do we size our investments today?” Mall said Tuesday at a Bloomberg New Voices event in New York. Mall said she doesn't want to spend the money before it comes in, nor does she want to undersize new investments she makes now. 

Mall has been adding more real assets to the portfolio, including real estate, infrastructure and energy, as well as more niche strategies like water rights and agriculture. She also expects to be investing some of the proceeds in credit. 

The office, known as DFO Management, is separate from MSD Partners, the group that grew out of an earlier family office, MSD Capital, and started managing outside money more than a decade ago. MSD Partners agreed in October to merge with Bryon Trott's merchant bank BDT & Co. Some of the sale proceeds will also be farmed out to the merged company. 

Mall spent almost 12 years at Carnegie Corp., where she focused on real estate and natural resources portfolios, as well as inflation-linked and absolute return strategies. She followed with a two-year stint at Foresite Capital before joining MSD as chief investment officer in September 2022.

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