One engaged in the business of actually making investments, rather than simply extracting rent from supplying them to someone else. Buy-side proper are the “end-investors” — the usually seen-but-not-heard ultimate clients, kindly patrician old folk who want for little more in their autumn years than the freedom to dandle grandchildren on their knees free of the worry that the central heating might get cut off or the Yaris repossessed — but in practice, if these fabled people even exist, they are represented by rapacious titans of the asset management industry, real money managers and hedge fund managers, who tend to eat their weaker grandchildren, and so don’t always come across as quite so charming.
See also