Investment Committee (IC)

The group that reviews and approves or rejects investment proposals, typically in a fund or institutional investor.

Example

Three partners who must agree before a fund commits capital to a deal.

A committee that approves everything brought to it is not pressure-testing anything. Its value is in the proposals it sends back.

Investment Memo — A written document setting out the case for and against an investment, the key assumptions, and the reasoning behind the decision, prepared before money moves.
Devil's Advocate — A person assigned to argue against a proposal regardless of their own view, so the case against it is made properly.

A memo is a thinking tool before it is a selling document — Two versions of the same memo can describe the same deal and do opposite jobs - one is written to get to yes, the other is written to find out whether yes is correct. (9 min)
The committee's job is to break the memo, not approve it — An investment committee that never says no has stopped being a check on anything. The difference between a real pressure test and a rubber stamp is almost never visible from the approval rate alone. (13 min)