A fund of funds gives investors a diverse portfolio and gives fund managers long-term capital to invest.

There are three phases to the lifetime of a fund of funds:

• Fundraising, which takes 12 to 18 months
• The investment period, where the fund makes new investments over the course of about five years
• The divestment period, during which the fund exits its investments, takes its profits and returns the money to its investors.

So A Dictionary of Finance got three experts on funds of funds from the European Investment Bank to come on the podcast and explain all this and more. They were all pretty good fun.

Listen to the podcast to find out:

• What it means to subscribe to a fund. (It’s harder than subscribing to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or YouTube. You should definitely subscribe to A Dictionary of Finance right now, but we can’t recommend whether you should subscribe to a fund of funds. It’s not for everyone.)
• What you’re committing to do when you subscribe to a fund of funds. Turns out, you don’t give the fund manager your money right away. But when the manager calls for your money to finance an investment, you'd better have it or the consequences are dire.
• Why diversification is an advantage of funds of funds. 
• What’s a limited partnership? An agreement to commit a specific amount of capital to a fund—and no more than that amount. That’s the “limited” part of the limited partnership.

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Let us know what you think or what you’d like to hear more about on the podcast. You’ll find us on Twitter at @EIBMatt or @AllarTankler.

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