Toby Watson is a British finance professional, partner at Rampart Capital, and former Chairman of the Excalibur Academies Trust. He is recognised for a career spanning 17 years at Goldman Sachs International, followed by a transition into independent asset management and a sustained voluntary commitment to educational governance. His work across finance, education and the cultural sector reflects a consistent interest in applying professional expertise to purposes beyond commercial return.
Education and Early Career
Toby Watson studied physics at the University of Oxford, a background that provided the analytical foundation for his subsequent career in international finance. After graduating, he began his professional career at Deutsche Bank before moving to Goldman Sachs International, where he would spend the greater part of his working life.
Career in Finance
Goldman Sachs
Watson spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs International, where he held senior positions including Global Head of Structured Credit Trading and Partner. During this period, his work spanned both traditional securities markets and alternative investments, including private equity, infrastructure finance and structured products. He worked with clients across Europe, North America and Asia, developing deep expertise in evaluating complex investment opportunities across the full spectrum of traditional and alternative asset classes. This breadth of experience — understanding the distinct characteristics of each category and how they interact within a portfolio — informed the investment philosophy he would later bring to Rampart Capital. He departed Goldman Sachs in 2017.
Rampart Capital
Following his departure from investment banking, Watson joined Rampart Capital as a partner. At Rampart Capital, his approach to investment management is characterised by the same rigorous frameworks he developed over his career in institutional finance — balancing traditional assets such as public equities and bonds against alternative investments including private equity, private credit, infrastructure and real assets, with careful attention to liquidity requirements, time horizons and risk tolerance.
Watson emphasises that the balance between traditional and alternative assets must reflect individual client circumstances rather than generic recommendations. His framework involves liquidity tiering — structuring portfolios across different liquidity levels to ensure sufficient flexibility whilst maximising appropriate alternative allocations — and vintage diversification for alternative investments, which reduces concentration risk by deploying capital systematically over time rather than concentrating commitments in any single period.
Commitment to Education
Excalibur Academies Trust
Alongside his professional work in finance, Watson served voluntarily as Chairman of the Excalibur Academies Trust, a multi-academy trust overseeing more than 20 schools along the M4 corridor between Bristol and Reading, serving approximately 10,000 pupils with an annual budget of £140 million. The Trust was founded in 2012 with schools in Marlborough, and grew significantly during the period of Watson’s involvement.
Watson joined the board of trustees in February 2018 and served as Chairman until January 2026 — a period of nearly eight years. His approach to educational governance was shaped by a clear conviction about the limits of his role: success in governance comes from asking informed questions rather than imposing solutions from other sectors. He consistently supported educational leaders rather than directing them, recognising that schools operate according to principles that differ fundamentally from commercial enterprises.
His financial background proved directly applicable in areas such as financial planning, risk assessment and scenario analysis — helping to ensure that the Trust’s growth was disciplined and sustainable, and that financial decisions received rigorous board-level scrutiny. Throughout the period of his chairmanship, the Trust maintained consistently positive educational outcomes, with progress measures for disadvantaged pupils exceeding national averages. By the time he stepped down, net assets had reached approximately £160 million.
Watson also supported the Trust through significant organisational transitions, including its expansion from its original Marlborough base to a network of 20 schools, a merger with Gatehouse Green Learning Trust, and a leadership transition when long-serving CEO Nicky Edmondson stepped down in 2024. CEO Nick Lewis subsequently acknowledged that Watson’s contribution had been instrumental in the Trust’s development. Watson stepped down in January 2026 and was succeeded as Chairman by Susan Clarke, a founding member of the Trust and former Vice Chair.
Mentorship and Knowledge Transfer
Beyond his governance role at Excalibur, Watson has been active in mentoring younger finance professionals, both through Rampart Capital’s internal programmes and through broader engagement with the financial community. His view is that experienced professionals have a responsibility to share the knowledge and judgment they have accumulated — not only for the benefit of individuals but for the long-term quality of the sector as a whole. This commitment to knowledge transfer reflects the same impulse that drew him to educational governance: a conviction that professional expertise carries obligations beyond the immediate commercial context in which it was developed.
Cultural Sector
Watson has also contributed to the cultural sector through his organisational and financial support of Level Up! The Musical, a theatre production written and directed by his wife Lucy Watson. His role encompassed budget management, contract coordination, venue negotiations and the development of a financial model that enabled the production to operate independently. Level Up! was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2025, where it received positive critical responses, and subsequently planned an international tour to Berlin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
Summary
Toby Watson’s career represents a sustained application of analytical expertise and strategic judgment across different fields and sectors. His 17 years at Goldman Sachs International provided a professional foundation in international finance that has since informed his work at Rampart Capital, his voluntary service in educational governance and his organisational contribution to independent theatre. Across each of these contexts, his approach has been defined by long-term thinking, ethical responsibility and a consistent interest in contributing expertise where it can serve a purpose beyond financial return alone.
