A Manager Selection Scorecard for Private Market Allocators: A structured framework for choosing private fund managers, and for telling skill apart from luck

In private markets the choice of manager matters more than in any other part of investing, because the dispersion between the best and worst managers is enormous and, unlike in public markets, persistent. Yet many allocators choose managers on the strength of a headline track record and a polished presentation, neither of which reliably predicts future performance. This paper sets out a structured scorecard for manager selection built around six weighted dimensions: team and organisation, track record, strategy and edge, process and risk, terms and alignment, and operations and controls. It shows how to decompose a reported track record into market beta, leverage, timing and true skill, how to test for performance persistence, and how to recognise the red flags that precede manager failure. Using a worked evaluation of four managers, it demonstrates how the scorecard converts a mass of qualitative impressions into a defensible ranking, and it provides a due diligence process and monitoring framework that family offices and institutional allocators can apply directly.