The Dell Foundation's Portfolio

An update on the Dell Foundation + a profile on North Wall Capital

March 24, 2026

This week we revisit The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, which we last profiled in April 2024. The foundation was seeded with an initial grant of $1 billion by Michael Dell in 1999 with the purpose of using technology and resources to solve the “complex set of health, educational, and financial circumstances that can limit opportunity for children and families living in urban poverty."

 

Dell, founder of the eponymous computer giant, started the foundation to manage his philanthropic interests. Around the same time he founded MSD Capital as his private family office, which in 2022 was restructured as DFO Management.

 

In 2009 Dell also founded MSD Partners, a separate investment advisory firm for external investors to engage in the same strategies developed by MSD Capital and alongside the Dell family. MSD Partners merged with Byron Trott’s merchant bank BDT & Company in 2023 to form BDT & MSD Partners, which today offers both advisory and investment services with offices across the US, Europe and Dubai.

 

When we last covered The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation’s portfolio, it managed $1.7 billion in assets as of 12/31/22. Its latest tax filing for year-end 2024 shows that the foundation’s total assets have grown by more than 400 percent to $7.8 billion.

A large portion of that growth comes from the contributions of Michael Dell himself. Dell contributed a total of just over $1.4 billion to the Foundation in 2024, including 5.3 million shares of Dell and 6.4 million shares of Hayward Holdings representing approximately $771 million. In 2024, the foundation funded hundreds of individual scholarships and programs at universities around the US and internationally worth roughly $163 million and approved future payments for similar programs of $143 million.

 

According to tax filings, the foundation paid $5 million in investment management fees to DFO Management and $1.8 million to Goldman Sachs in 2024.

 

The Dell Foundation invests with multiple managers across a variety of public and private asset classes. Within its public portfolio its largest position across all asset classes is with AKO, where the foundation is invested in its Global, Global long-only and European long-only funds. Its largest private manager relationship is with Silver Lake Partners, spread across at least 11 different vehicles.

 

North Wall

 

For our users, last Friday’s newsletter contained samples of the Dell Foundation’s public and private managers, one of which was North Wall Capital.

 

North Wall is a private credit investor founded in 2017 by Chief Investment Officer Fabian Chrobog alongside founding partner and portfolio manager Alexander Garnier. Before founding North Wall, Chrobog spent over a decade in European private credit, first as an associate at D.B. Zwirn, later as a portfolio manager at Polygon Investment Partners and most recently as a partner at Warwick Capital Partners, which he helped spin out of Polygon.

 

Garnier began his career as an attorney before helping set up JP Morgan’s Global Special Opportunities Group in 2010 to deploy $5 billion of the bank’s capital in private credit and equity strategies. In 2014 he helped spin part of the team out of the bank to Bain Capital, where he helped lead its European Credit team.

 

The firm operates specifically in Western European markets across four strategies – opportunistic lower-middle market credit, senior lending, asset-backed opportunities and legal assets. The Dell Foundation is currently the only disclosed LP of North Wall, and the firm represents one of the Foundation’s few private credit managers.

 

Its regulatory AUM has grown markedly since 2021, matched by a similar growth in its investment team.

It is also worth noting that while North Wall’s latest regulatory AUM disclosed in filings was $1.6 billion as of March 2025 the firm announced in a June press release that its AUM had grown to €2.9 billion due to increased investor interest in European credit and successful first closes of its latest credit opportunities and legal assets funds.

 

North Wall’s website details just over 20 of its recent transactions going back to March 2022 and spanning all four of its strategies. The deals are primarily focused on the UK but include a few German and Nordic-based companies across the financial services, industrials and industrial services, energy, telecommunications, technology and real estate industries.

 

Some of North Wall’s most recent publicized transactions include its commitment of £93 million of first lien senior debt to UK-based electrical copper component manufacturer MSS International, which is a portfolio company of US-based PE investor Stellex, in August and its £43.5 million senior lending facility provided to UK-based managing general underwriter Eaton Gate in February.

 

Headquartered in London, North Wall is far from the only Europe-focused credit investor in its neighborhood, with 35 similar managers located nearby. Using OWL’s manager search tools, users can easily create a list of Europe-focused credit firms in London. In addition to seeing the results in a table format, users can see where the results of a filtered search are located via the Map tab.

In September, North Wall announced that it had opened a second office in New York as it seeks to strengthen and expand its relationships with US-based institutional investors.

 

“Establishing a permanent presence in New York is a clear signal of our long-term commitment to this market, enabling us to build even closer partnerships with investors and to seize the opportunities we see ahead,” Chrobog said of the expansion in a press release.

 

The New York office is led Garrett Holmes, a managing director on North Wall’s legal assets investment team and its general counsel. Holmes joined the firm full time in 2020 from Sidley Austin after serving as a secondee for North Wall since 2019 and has been leading its legal team from his home in Boston since 2021.

 

Holmes is joined by Rebecca Frisch, an associate on North Wall’s investor partnerships team, who relocated from its London office. The firm also announced that it had completed its first local hire for its new office in John Meuchner and appointed him senior business development executive, North America.

 

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