Private Markets Fintech iCapital Hires Bloomberg Veteran Sonali Basak

Sonali Basak is joining private markets tech start-up iCapital as chief investment strategist. (Courtesy Neibart Group)

Private-markets technology start-up iCapital has named former longtime Bloomberg News journalist Sonali Basak as its new chief investment strategist, a move underscoring financial firms’ push to shape conversations around investing and win over clients through formats that traditionally belonged only to the business press.

Basak will be responsible for leading and amplifying the company’s investment outlook and content such as podcasts, articles, and conferences.

She spent nearly 12 years at Bloomberg, where she was a well-known anchor and gained a following among institutional and individual investors as Bloomberg Television’s lead global finance correspondent.

Basak will report to iCapital Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Calcano and start in early September, based in the company’s New York City headquarters. In a joint interview with Basak, Calcano said he has “often thought of Sonali as an influencer in the financial services marketplace.”

“We really want to accelerate what we’re doing from an educational standpoint,” he said. As more investors add alternative assets to their portfolios, Calcano said, “it was really critical for us to find somebody to come in that had the deep understanding of what was happening in the private markets,” and how they intersect with public markets.

In recent years iCapital has become a key player in the complex, growing private markets sector. The privately held, 12-year-old start-up is backed by every major bank and asset manager on Wall Street and sells widely used technology platforms to financial advisors and firms investing in private assets such as private credit.

A crowded field of fund managers is mounting an aggressive effort to get their products in the hands of everyday investors as they confront a saturated pool of institutions such as endowments.

Boosting money managers like Blackstone , KKR, and BlackRock is the recent executive order signed by President Donald Trump allowing investors access to alternative investments—a broad definition that includes cryptocurrencies—in retirement accounts.

iCapital has emerged as a central connector between those firms and wealth advisors looking for a big menu of funds to choose from. The company has some 1,950 employees and was valued at more than $7.5 billion last month after raising $820 million in new funding.

Basak said iCapital would be “ramping up very materially how much we are publishing and communicating with investors.” She thought she would work in journalism for the rest of her career, she said, but when Calcano described the opportunity in the role, it became “a no-brainer.”

“I wasn’t looking to go into finance. This particular opportunity was unique in that there’s so much latitude. It’s a company that’s at the center of the industry,” Basak said, adding that helping to make “investor education much more broad and available is really important—it’s what I’ve been doing my whole career.”

Basak takes on the role from Anastasia Amoroso, who was chief investment strategist from 2021 until she left for Partners Group earlier this year. Amoroso had joined iCapital from JPMorgan Chase, where she was an investment strategist for its private bank.

iCapital joins most major financial firms in hiring former reporters, producers, and others from the media industry to design content strategies, promote their businesses, and reach investors more directly online and in-person.

“I remember having this conversation quite a few years ago with our CFO, and I said, ‘We’re going to spend a lot of money building a studio.’ And he’s like, ‘Why are we doing this?’” Calcano said, laughing.
“I’m like, ‘Just trust me, this is something we’re going to do, and it’s worthwhile.”

Write to Rebecca Ungarino at rebecca.ungarino@barrons.com