A Greek family from Valtetsi, in the highlands of Arcadia, and Poros, in the Saronic Gulf. Now in Chicago.
Our storyThe office manages the family's investable assets. One client, no outside capital. Figures are from the most recent quarterly statement.
The operating rules of the office, adopted in 2016 and amended in 2019 and 2024.
Two years of total family spending sits in short Treasuries at all times, untouched by any strategy. No single position is sized so that its complete loss would change how anyone in the family lives. The office itself uses no leverage — no margin, no portfolio loans — and accepts it only inside fund structures.
IPS §2.3 (reserve policy), §4.1 (position limits), §4.6 (leverage prohibition) · compliance certified quarterly since Q3 2016 — forty consecutive clean reports · no margin or lending agreement has ever existed at either custodian.
We do not pay active fees for market exposure. Public equity is indexed at under ten basis points. Active and private managers are hired only where manager selection matters, and each must beat the relevant index net of fees over a full cycle or be replaced. The blended cost budget for the entire portfolio is 65 basis points.
IPS §3.2 (cost budget) · the full fee ledger — every management fee, carry accrual, and transaction cost — has been published in each annual letter since 2017 · manager scorecards reviewed every January; four managers replaced under the rule to date.
At least half the portfolio must be convertible to cash within ninety days without forced selling. Private commitments are paced so that unfunded capital calls never exceed cash on hand plus one year of bond-ladder maturities, tested quarterly against stressed assumptions.
IPS §4.4 (liquidity floor) · stress test run quarterly since 2016; the March 2020 drawdown was absorbed within policy, with no forced sale and no missed capital call · results tabled and minuted at every committee meeting.
The office manages Sarantopoulos capital only. It does not accept outside investors, sell products, take placement fees, or sit on paid boards.
Office charter, art. 1 (sole-client clause), unchanged since 2016 · staff conflict-of-interest declarations filed annually — ten complete years on file · the external auditor has confirmed every year since inception that no third-party accounts, products, or placement arrangements exist.
Written in 2016, before deployment began. Each phase had an exit test set in advance. Four phases are complete; the fifth is ongoing.
The sale of the operating business closed in March 2016. Proceeds of roughly $290M sat in a ladder of three-, six-, and twelve-month Treasury bills for over a year while the office was built around them. Custody was split between two global custodians so no single failure could be fatal. The Investment Policy Statement was ratified by the family council. An outsourced CIO was retained alongside an internal staff of three — director, controller, operations. Wills, holding structures, and pre-deployment gifting were completed before the first dollar of market risk was taken.
Share-purchase agreement of 14 March 2016 · custody agreements executed June 2016 · IPS ratification minuted at the inaugural family council, 12 May 2016 — the anniversary of Valtetsi.
Public markets were entered on a fixed schedule: equal tranches, monthly, over twenty-four months. Equity went into broad global index funds, with a direct-indexed U.S. sleeve run for tax-loss harvesting. The T-bill ladder converted into an investment-grade bond portfolio matched to projected family outflows. Three income properties were bought unlevered between 2017 and 2019, each clearing a six percent net yield on conservative rents; two candidates that missed the hurdle were passed on.
All twenty-four tranches logged with date, price, and account in the 2017–18 quarterly reports · each property purchase carried two independent valuations and a written yield memo · deployment minutes archived complete.
Commitments of $20–30M a year went out across buyout, growth, and venture funds, spread over vintage years so that no single year's entry prices dominate the book. The 2020 vintage was committed on schedule. Private credit was added where the covenants were real. Two absolute-return funds were taken on; one was exited in 2022. Three percent of assets went into vaulted gold as monetary insurance.
Five vintage years, 2019–2023, each commitment carrying a written underwriting memo, reference calls, and a fee/carry model on file · pacing model re-run semi-annually and reconciled against actual calls and distributions since 2019.
Long-horizon assets moved into generation-skipping trusts between 2021 and 2022. The foundation was seeded in 2021 with $24M — five percent of assets at the time — and has since received a fixed share of each year's distribution. The family constitution was ratified at the 2023 assembly: who decides, who may work in the office, how shares pass, how disputes end. Since 2018, every member from twenty-five has rotated through the investment committee as an observer.
Trust deeds and foundation charter drafted by outside counsel in two jurisdictions, executed 2021–22 · funding valuations documented at transfer · the ratification vote of 9 September 2023 held in person, minuted, and archived.
Distributions began in January 2024. Distributions follow a 2.5 percent rule smoothed over five years — about $14M at current values — so family budgets never whipsaw with markets. Rebalancing is mechanical at ±3 percent bands around policy weights; it has triggered eleven times in ten years, each trade minuted with the band breach that forced it. The full IPS is re-examined once a decade, or on the death of a principal — the first decennial review falls in 2026 and is under way now. The objective is real, per-capita growth across generations.
Spending rule and bands defined in IPS §5 · distributions paid on schedule every January since 2024 · the 2026 decennial review will be delivered in writing to every adult member, whether they ask for it or not.
The policy portfolio, unchanged since the 2019 allocation review, marked at 30 June 2026. Equities and private markets carry the growth; bonds and cash cover distributions; real assets hedge currency and inflation.
Reconciles to the 30 June 2026 custodian statements at both custodians · private-market values at latest audited fund NAV, adjusted for subsequent calls and distributions.
Look-through exposure computed by the administrator from index constituents and underlying fund reports, not from fund domiciles — a Cayman vehicle holding German assets counts as Europe.
Performance is measured against 70% MSCI ACWI / 30% Bloomberg Global Aggregate, net of the 65bp cost budget. Since inception in July 2016 the portfolio has compounded at 6.9% annualized net of costs and distributions, against 6.3% for the benchmark; both figures are audited and appear in each annual letter. Weights are policy targets; holdings drift within ±3% bands between quarterly reviews.
The family comes from Valtetsi, a village in the Arcadian highlands west of Tripoli.
Ancient Arcadia was the mountain heart of the Peloponnese — Pan's homeland, a country of shepherds and highlanders whose people claimed to be older than the moon, and whom the other Greeks half-believed. Later centuries turned "Arcadia" into Europe's word for paradise. The actual place was harder and better than that: thin soil, long winters, and a population that learned to keep flocks, keep faith, and keep out of debt. Its poverty was its fortress — little to take, everything to defend.
Pausanias, Description of Greece, bk. VIII (Arcadia) · Plutarch, Roman Questions 76, on the Arcadians "before the moon" · the pastoral Arcadia of Virgil's Eclogues and Renaissance painting.
Weeks into the War of Independence, Ottoman columns marched out of Tripolitsa to crush the revolt in the hills. At Valtetsi they found villagers and shepherds turned soldiers, dug into stone redoubts, commanded by Theodoros Kolokotronis with the Mavromichalis brothers beside him. Two days of fighting broke the attack. It was the revolution's first real victory in the Peloponnese — the proof that the thing could be done — and four months later Tripolitsa itself fell.
Kolokotronis, Memoirs, as dictated to Tertsetis (1846) · Trikoupis, History of the Greek Revolution (1853–57) · battle of 12–13 May 1821 (O.S.); fall of Tripolitsa, 23 September 1821.
Ελευθερία ή Θάνατος — Freedom or Death — was the oath those men fought under. The family keeps it, without drama, as a rule of living: what is yours — your land, your name, your word — is never pledged, never mortgaged, never sold under pressure. Independence first; everything else follows.
The oath and war flags of 1821 · carried into the national motto of the Hellenic Republic · kept in the family as its first rule.
The family's Greece has two addresses: Valtetsi, in the hills of Arcadia, and Poros, in the Saronic Gulf, where part of the family settled by the water. The Chicago branch came later. The houses in both places are still in the family, and the habits came with them: build solid, owe little, keep your word.
Family records, Valtetsi and Poros · parish and land registries of Arcadia and the Saronic islands · both houses remain in the family.
Eleftheria i Thanatos — Freedom or Death · The oath of 1821, kept as the family's measure of every decision since.
The structures that carry the family and its obligations forward.
Seeded with $24M in 2021 and funded since by a fixed share of each year's distribution. Its two programs are deliberately narrow: full university scholarships for students from the villages of Arcadia — sixty-one awarded to date — and the restoration of pre-revolutionary buildings in Valtetsi itself, where the schoolhouse reopened in 2024. A majority of its trustees are not family members, so the giving answers to its purpose rather than to family politics.
Foundation charter, arts. 2 (purpose) and 5 (trustee composition) · $9.4M granted through 2025, each grant published with recipient, amount, and outcome · accounts audited alongside the office's since 2021.
Two observer seats on the investment committee are reserved for family members under thirty, on three-year terms — a practice running since 2018. Nine members have rotated through; two now hold voting seats. Observers read every memo, attend every meeting, and vote on nothing until they have sat through a full market cycle.
Investment committee charter, §6 (observer seats, terms, and the no-vote rule) · attendance and reading logs kept since 2018 · nine observer memos on file, one per member per year.
Ratified at the 2023 assembly by twenty-nine of thirty-four adult members, and amendable only by the same three-quarters vote. It settles the questions that break families when left unwritten: who may work in the office, how shares pass and how they are bought back, how disputes are resolved and by whom. It has been invoked once — a 2024 buyback, handled under article VII exactly as written — and contains one unbreakable clause, inherited from the village: no member may ever pledge family assets.
Constitution of 9 September 2023, arts. IV (employment), VII (transfers and buybacks), IX (disputes), XII (the pledge prohibition) · one invocation on record, minuted 2024 · no amendments to date.
The annual letter has gone out each January since 2017 — holdings, changes, costs, mistakes. Ten to date; none edited after sending. Archive
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