Battling Bob.

• Author: Barnes, Clifton
• Position: MONEY TALK: North Carolina's financial set

Departing a big state pension fund moved Robert Borden off a political hot seat and the national stage. He's just fine with that.

Robert Borden has found that running a $2 billion investment company with 24 clients is just as rewarding--and a lot less headline-grabbing--than leading a $26 billion public pension fund with more than 300,000 participants.

Borden is chief investment officer of Chapel Hill-based Delegate Advisors LLC, which has doubled in assets since he joined the firm in 2012. The move followed an abrupt departure from his post as chief executive officer of the Columbia-based South Carolina Retirement System Investment Commission, where he attracted national publicity after shifting 40% of assets into alternative investments such as private equity and hedge funds from 2007-11. The resulting cascade of fees paid to Wall Street managers, topping $300 million annually, angered some South Carolina lawmakers who said returns didn't justify the expenses.

Ready for a change, Borden packed up and moved 230 miles north. While he doesn't miss the politics, handling money for wealthy families is a different role than representing retired schoolteachers and other state employees who relied heavily on the pension. "It always helped me when I was putting up with the political B.S. or the challenges of the markets to think there are hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries who are counting on me to do this for them."

His new job working with high net worth families is equally motivating, he says. "Why don't [small foundations and wealthy families] have access to the same thing that the $30 billion endowment has?" His 30 years of experience is enabling Delegate to offer access to investments typically reserved for larger institutions, particularly private equity and private debt funds, Borden says.

Delegate's model is to have fewer clients but meaningful ones, he says. Its 10 professionals are split between Chapel Hill and San Francisco, with a Texas office being considered. While Borden works from North Carolina, President Andy Hart lives in northern California, where Silicon Valley executives made up the company's initial client base. Hart previously worked for another Bay Area money-management company. "Our core is first-generation entrepreneurs," he says. "That means they also have an appetite for private equity because they get it. They, themselves, are private-equity companies. They are serial entrepreneurs."

Other clients live across the...