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Risk management for whalers:
JP Morgan Chase recently suffered one of the most expensive whale-related disasters since Moby Dick sank the Pequod.
If you’re a C-exec or board member worrying about risk systems, this mess should have gotten your attention. The JPM task force has highlighted some of the problems.
Your systems, and those of your investment partners, may be on top of everything. But I’m sure there were people telling Mr. Dimon the same thing not very long ago.
David Keohane posted this summary of the task force conclusions at FT.com/alphaville:
1. Judgment, execution and escalation in 1Q12 were poor
2. Level of scrutiny did not evolve commensurate with increasing complexity of activities
3. Risk Management was ineffective in dealing with Synthetic Credit Portfolio
4. Risk limits were not sufficiently granular
5. Approval and implementation of Synthetic Credit VaR model were inadequate.
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Comings and goings: Ken Frier and Srini Pulavarti:
Last week two top investment pros announced they would be taking on new duties.
Srinivas Pulavarti starts as chief investment officer of the $2.6 billion UCLA Investment Company in Los Angeles on August 1. And Ken Frier has been picked for the CIO position at the $54 billion UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Henry G. “Hank” Higdon, of HigdonBraddockMatthews recruited Mr. Pulavarti for UCLA and Rick Lannamann at SpencerStuart brought Mr. Frier to the UAW.
Ken Frier: Taking on a fund that’s neither fish nor fowl:
That UAW trust holds funds which pay health benefits for retired auto workers. It was spawned by the massive federal bailout of the Detroit automakers in 2008 when bankrupt GM and Chrysler and not-quite-bankrupt Ford needed to offload their retiree medical liabilities from their own cratered balance sheets.
A complex, high-stakes negotiation between companies, unions and the Feds created the Trust, which opened its doors in Ann Arbor in January, 2010. To fund those liabilities, the trust got company stock in the automakers, plus some cash, and other odds and ends.
Eric Henry, the Trust’s first CIO, made a good start on diversifying those legacy assets and setting up a professional investment office. After two years on the job, he left in March of this year to become CIO of the Hershey Trust in Pennsylvania. A good move for him (he doubled his salary) but it left a big gap in Ann Arbor. The search and selection process, driven by Adam Blumenthal, their investment committee chairman, moved pretty fast for a position at this level: Mr. Frier will be taking over only four months after Mr. Henry’s departure.
Mr. Henry earned $499,332 at the Trust in 2010. My guess is that Mr. Frier will get somewhat more than that.
As Mr. Blumenthal has pointed out, the Trust is a sort of hybrid: not exactly a pension, not exactly an endowment, but with some of the characteristics of both. Mr. Frier, of course, has run both corporate pensions (at Disney and Hewlett Packard), and served as chief investment officer at the Stanford Management Company.
Mr. Frier is an ace risk analyst and, as sources close to the search told me, one of the toughest aspects of running this kind of fund is to understand the risks imposed by rising future medical costs which, unlike conventional pension payouts, are highly unpredictable. In a period when national health policy is in flux, figuring out those liabilities and building a portfolio that meshes with those future costs is going to be a steep challenge. I’ve spoken to Ken Frier on several occasions, and I agree with the Trust that he has the experience, temperament and intellect for the job.
Your humble scribe – long ago and very briefly – held a UAW card. As it happens, I didn’t spend thirty years punching out Oldsmobiles in Lansing, Michigan, but I appreciate the people who did. Those UAW retirees may never meet Ken Frier or understand just what he does, but they should be glad he’s joined their team.
My sources tell me that Ken has already sold his house in Palo Alto and is eager to get started in Ann Arbor on August 1st.
See my interview with Ken: A CIO for All Seasons: Ken Frier compares corporate and endowment portfolio management, https://www.charlesskorina.com/nl27/
Srinivas Pulavarti: The Amazing Spider-Man lands in Westwood:
Readers may recall that Mr. Pulavarti stands high on our infamous performance-for-pay rankings for 2006 – 2010. As CIO of Spider Management in Richmond, Virginia, he earned $826,768 in calendar 2009, which put him in the middle of the pack among his peers in our list of the 50 highest-paid non-profit fund managers. But his 5-year annualized return was a lofty 7.7 percent, ranking fifth-highest in the group. On a performance-for-pay basis we ranked him number 4 overall, which is very good, indeed. See: https://www.charlesskorina.com/the-skorina-letter-no-35/
When I heard about Srini’s move to UCLA, I naturally wondered how performance of their endowment compared to returns of the University of Richmond, whose endowment is managed by their wholly-owned Spider Management Co.
The two funds are roughly the same size and in the five years 2007 – 2011, UCLA had an annualized return of 4 percent. In the same span, University of Richmond earned 9.4 percent.
Those numbers speak for themselves, and I’ll bet the people at the UCLA Foundation thought so, too.
Did Mr. Pulavarti excel by taking big risks, swinging at every wild investment pitch? Nope. If we look at volatility as measured by standard deviation of returns, we see that UCLA’s SD was 16.2 percent vs. UR’s mere 14.6 percent. Spider earned consistently higher returns with significantly less volatility.
Look, for instance at the dismal FY2009. UCLA lost 21.1 percent (which actually wasn’t too terrible compared to some of their peers). But Spider held their losses that year to just 14 percent, a standout performance under the circumstances.
Endowment management in the University of California system is complex. There is a central pool run by the UC Regents, but the various campuses may put as much or little into that central pot as they like. Each campus has its own parallel foundation with its own board. The two largest schools: UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles have, in addition, created separate management companies to serve their foundations. Are you confused yet?
Mr. Pulavarti’s official titles will be President and CIO of the UCLA Investment Company, so his immediate boss will be the Investment Company Board and its current chairman, David Nazarian. Mr. Pulavarti takes over from George N. Letteney, who, with a small staff, has run the Foundation’s investments since 1998, and, since the creation of the Investment Company last October, has served as interim president and CIO.
Above the Investment Company Board sits the Foundation Board and its chair, Steven L. Klosterman, setting overall policy, including compensation. It was he who ran the search. Then there’s the Foundation Board’s Investment Steering Committee, another group recruited to provide “focused oversight.” And that’s as far into the Matrix as we want to go.
Practically speaking, of course, the point is to create several layers of insulation between the investment professionals and UCLA’s administrators and general trustees.
If Mr. Pulavarti worked directly for UCLA or the UC Regents he would be paid out of highly-visible taxpayer funds, like any college administrator; and that would make paying him what he’s worth politically problematic. To the extent that Mr. Pulavarti and his staff can reduce costs associated with contracting with outside managers and increase investment revenues he will, in effect, be paying his own salary. This is how any investment organization should work, but explaining it to the general public has never been easy.
It’s highly likely, then, that the Foundation has given Mr. Pulavarti a package which, including incentives, will pay him about $1 million in a good year. And, as noted above, Mr. Pulavarti seems to have a lot of those.
—————————————
A conversation with Srini Pulavarti:
I spoke to Srini a few weeks ago, before his move to UCLA had been disclosed, but after it was announced that he had declined to extend his employment contract with Spider Management Company.
Spider invests money for twenty-three entities. They are not only an endowment management company, but a full-fledged outsourced CIO. The largest slice, $1.9 billion comes from the endowment of its institutional parent, University of Richmond. The other investors provide about $1.2 billion.
Mr. Pulavarti – universally known as “Srini” – was born in India. He told me not long ago that he loved growing up on a college campus where his father was a professor of engineering.
“I love teaching, Charles, and I always thought I would become a teacher or professor myself. My best memories of Spider will be the classes I got to teach on the University of Richmond campus and the interaction with the students. I love what I do, but if I couldn’t be an investment manager, I would be a teacher.”
Skorina:
Srini, a lot of institutional leaders have been expressing their unhappiness with the high cost of alternative investments. We spoke to the Treasurer of South Carolina last month, for instance, and he’s pushing the issue hard on behalf of their state pension. What do you feel about the cost/benefit trade-off for alternatives?
Pulavarti:
Charles, when I was a young economist twenty years ago, I took a close look at the true costs of retail mutual funds and the all-in costs of 401K plans. This question of the true costs paid by investors is something I’ve always been very conscious of.
As far as I’m concerned, in the low-return environment we face today, any large institutional investor should be extremely wary of putting money into two-and-twenty investment vehicles.
First, the next few years are going to be difficult, to say the least. A well-diversified institutional portfolio should not reasonably expect to make over five percent in real, inflation-adjusted returns. Spider, for example, has cut their investments in two-and-twenty funds in half over the last three years. We will probably take the level down even further.
Look what the Kauffman Foundation uncovered when they did a study of their returns on VC investments over the past twenty-two years. They were terrible. I commend them for doing such a study and making it public. More investors are going to undertake such studies of their own portfolios and will revisit their asset allocation frameworks when they see the results of their illiquid investments over a long period of time. I predict that most will find they were not adequately compensated for their illiquidity and other associated risks.
[See: http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/institutional-limited-partners-must-accept-blame-for-poor-long-term-returns-from-venture-capital.aspx
May 7, 2012 A compelling new report out today from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation describes how… for 15 years, VC funds have failed to return to investors the significant amounts of cash invested, despite high-profile successes, including Google, Groupon and LinkedIn.
Skorina:
Venture Capital is a pretty small niche, Srini. How do you feel about private equity generally?
Pulavarti:
Charles, why would I pay someone two percent a year to have a ten year minimum call on my money for blind pool investments when my staff and I are working ten, twelve hours a day to scour the world for any and all opportunities? Certainly there are a few good PE firms we would like to invest in, but they are a very small sub-set.
Skorina:
So what are you invested in?
Pulavarti:
We’re mostly in long-only active managers in global liquid markets.
Skorina:
With Europe imploding and China stalling, where do you feel most comfortable investing?
Pulavarti:
I like the States! I’m worried about China, I’m worried about India, Europe, darn near everywhere. There are serious structural problems in all these non-US markets that throw up periodic opportunities but I am afraid to commit long-term capital to these markets.
But here, at least we understand the problems, we understand the solutions, we’ve dealt with past crises and I think there is a good chance that we will deal with our problems faster and better than anywhere else in the world. It’s all relative and our system works pretty well, despite all the noise.
Skorina:
So, Srini, circling back to you and what’s next, is there anything you can tell me?
Pulavarti:
Well, we’ve talked from time to time and you know that I’ve been totally focused on building Spider’s business and producing good numbers. I think I’ve done reasonably well during a difficult period, and we’ve been able to build up the outsourced business by providing good investment performance to our partners.
As to what’s next? I just don’t know. Hopefully, the phone will ring.
Skorina:
Thanks, Srini, always good talking to you. And best of luck, wherever you’re headed.
Pulavarti:
Same to you, Charles.
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$58 trillion – the gift that keeps on giving:
“…in every investment transaction you’re part of, it’s likely that someone’s making a mistake. The key to success is to not have it be you.” – Howard Marks, Chairman, Oaktree
There is no business like the money management business.
Private wealth in North America reached $38 trillion dollars in 2011 (note 1, 2) according to a recent Boston Consulting Group study. That includes 2,928 U.S. families who each have investable assets over $100 million. (The corresponding number for global private wealth is said to be $123 trillion.) [Private wealth excludes family businesses, homes, etc; it includes only investable wealth]
In addition to the private wealth there is institutional wealth of about $16 trillion in public and private U.S pensions, including IRAs (notes 3 and 4).
Then add more than $600 billion in U.S. foundation assets (note 5) and $408 billion in U.S. Endowment assets (note 6). There’s another $500 billion in miscellaneous tax-exempt institutions, medical systems and union plans (note 7). Finally, a reputable source says there is $2.56 trillion in the hands of U.S. public charities (note 8).
The grand total is $58 trillion. All that money, public and private, has to be managed in some fashion by someone, and that someone expects to be paid for their efforts.
$ 38,000,000,000,000 Private wealth, North America
$ 16,080,000,000,000 Public and private U.S pensions
$ 600,000,000,000 U.S. foundation assets
$ 408,000,000,000 U.S. endowment assets
$ 500,000,000,000 Misc U.S. tax-exempt institutions, health systems, unions
$ 2,560,000,000,000 U.S. public charities
$ 58,148,000,000,000 Grand total U.S. investable wealth
These assets generate a lot of fees. If we assume that the costs of managing the money is at least eighty basis points (a low-ball estimate), then the investment management business in the U.S. generates at a minimum an eye-popping $465 billion dollars in yearly fees: close to half a trillion dollars!
Our arithmetic says at least $161 billion dollars of those fees annually comes out of the pockets of institutional investors.
And, as Anthony Effinger and Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam recently noted in a Bloomberg News piece:
“Even during rough patches like the current one, the [asset management] industry is attractive because profit margins are so high. Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price (TROW) Group Inc., for example, had net income of $773 million on revenue of $2.75 billion in 2011, giving it a profit margin of 28 percent.”
[See: http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-09/healey-rules-400-billion-empire-with-stakes-in-28-funds]
Is 28 percent a healthy profit margin?
Look at it this way: The U.S. Senate periodically (when retail fuel prices spike) marches the executives of Big Oil into a conference room and has the hide off them for their “windfall profits.” According to Yahoo! Finance, those big five integrated oil producers are currently earning a net profit of 7.9 percent in the latest quarter. That’s 7.9 percent for Big Oil vs. 28 percent for T. Rowe Price.
But what goes in one pocket necessarily comes out of another, and some large institutional investors have had enough. To trim external fees, Canadian plans have been in the vanguard of a nascent do-it-yourself investing movement by adding private equity, hedge fund, and real estate specialists to their teams.
In her endowment report for 2010, Harvard Management Company’s president Jane Mendillo prominently mentioned that she was looking at what it costs to manage investments in her shop. She hired an un-named consultant and paid them to figure it out. The consultant reported that, for the portion of the endowment run out of the investment office (about half), it was costing Harvard about 30 basis points of AUM on average over recent years.
Granted, the internal people run mostly passive public strategies and they still invest about half the portfolio externally with a lot of pricey alternative managers. But she argues they are still money ahead. According to Ms. Mendillo, that internal/external cost differential saved Harvard over a billion dollars in management fees over a decade.
See page 4 of the annual report:
http://cdn.wds.harvard.edu/hmc/2010_endowment_report_10_15_2010.pdf
On the other coast, Joe Dear, the CIO of CalPERS has also become outspoken on this subject. Mr. Dear is vowing to cut their investment costs. One of his top people worked up a big slide-show to explain it to their board.
In March, CalPERS Chief Operating Investment Officer Janine Guillot told the board that “internal management results in lower total costs, but more staff, and therefore higher internal costs.” And she concluded that it was essential to focus on that total cost, not only internal cost.
Her recommendations include:
* Focus on reducing external management fees, taking full advantage of CalPERS size and brand.
* Reduce use of fund-of-funds and other higher-cost commingled vehicles
* Reinvest external fee savings in internal capabilities. Develop a long-term resource strategy to enable management of portfolio at acceptable levels of risk
[See:
http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/board-cal-agenda/agendas/invest/201203/item06b-01.pdf]
There are no immediate plans to bring private assets in-house at CalPERS, Canadian-style, although Mr. Dear and his new (Canadian) private-equity chief Real Desrochers seem to be thinking about it long term. Meanwhile, they’re still trimming the cost of running the public assets as hard as they can. In April, another $500 million of their total $3.6 billion in international fixed income was taken away from external managers and handed to the staff in Sacramento.
Given that internal passive management has generally outperformed external active management for their public market assets in recent years, it doesn’t make any sense, as one board member said, for CalPERS to continue paying fees for underperformance.
[See:
http://www.pionline.com/article/20120430/PRINTSUB/120429888]
Another, unlikely, low-cost leader is the $43-billion dollar United Nations pension fund.
According to our friend Amanda White at Top 1000 Funds, they manage their portfolio with a staff of 58 professionals at a cost of only 15.3 basis points. Over 90 percent of the assets are managed in house, the exceptions being a few, mostly UN-related, private equity and real estate funds.
The fund is run in New York but, since the UN is legally extra-territorial (off-shore from everywhere, so to speak) their pension is often overlooked. It’s run by director of investments Suzanne Bishopric (previously the UN’s overall CFO). She’s a Harvard MBA who previously worked as an FX trader and as Director of Financial markets for McDonald’s. Ms. Bishopric’s salary, I think (according to the posted UN salary scales), is a relatively modest $284,777 ($172,071 base plus a $112,706 cost-of living supplement). However, that extra-territoriality thing means that it’s all tax-free. No New York City income tax; no New York State income tax; no U.S. income tax.
And, since UN expenditures are so well-insulated from actual electorates, Ms. Bishopric can hire and pay a big staff without anybody much caring.
For those endowments, foundations, and pension funds managing more than $1 billion, there is a strong case to be made for running more of the investment strategies in-house. Some interesting recent studies have shown that it’s possible to cut investment costs significantly thereby, and still generate returns equal to or greater than the outside managers they replace. The impediments to doing this are mostly institutional. The salaries of in-house professionals are usually highly visible; the fees paid to outside managers are hard to see.
One obvious, but often overlooked factor is that the external managers are usually tax-paying entities, and the fees they charge must include those taxes. Non-profit institutions pay their in-house managers out of un-taxed income. Even if their skills and performance are completely equivalent, the tax-paying external manager has to charge more to manage a given chunk of assets.
A report issued this spring by CEM Benchmarking in Toronto, Canada concluded that “funds with more internal management performed better after costs”.
CEM found that “for every 10% increase in internal management, there was an increase of 3.6 basis points in net value added; this increase was driven largely by the lower costs attributed to internal management.”
[See: http://digital.utpjournals.com/i/66288/35, Rotman International Journal of Pension Management – Volume 5 Issue 1]
Unfortunately, the biggest impediment to more efficient and higher-performing institutional funds is the public perception that paying competitive salaries to hire top talent is just plain unacceptable and unjust.
Behavioral economists try to track down and isolate the specific glitches in the human psyche which cause them to do dumb things with money. One of them is something called the “fairness trap.”
As James Surowiecki wrote in the New Yorker last month:
“The basic problem is that we care so much about fairness that we are often willing to sacrifice economic well-being to enforce it…”
Mr. Surowiecki forgot to put scare-quotes around the word “fairness” there, but I think he’s essentially correct.
To a certain extent, some Canadian and European plans have managed to overcome this bias against paying industry-competitive salaries and bonuses. The CEM study went on to compare compensation levels by region for full time investment employees and found that the average salaries were highest at Canadian funds.
For instance, in Canada the average salary for public pension investment department professionals was $536,000; next were European/British funds at $246,000, followed by American funds at $148,000 and Australian/New Zealand funds at $139,000. [all figures in U.S. dollars]
Fees are looming in importance in investor’s minds for a very good reason.
Industry pundits are forecasting more near-zero interest rates and poor economic growth. For instance, Mr. Bernanke testified in front of the Senate this week, noting that the Fed had just lowered its GDP growth forecast for calendar 2012 to a range of 1.9 – 2.4 percent.
JPMorgan Chase just weighed in with even darker tidings, looking for only 1.7 percent growth for 2012 as a whole, and that means things are getting worse quarter by quarter. They just lowered their Q2 forecast from 1.7 percent to 1.4 percent. For Q3 they’re penciling in an awful 1.5 percent. And, of course, Mr. Bernanke will do what he can to hammer interest rates even lower.
It’s no wonder that investment boards and institutional fund managers are looking for a better deal for their stakeholders.
Running an investment portfolio may be more prestigious than running a carwash, but it’s still a business, and the same principles apply. There are only two ways to improve the bottom line: boost revenue or cut costs. Right now, the latter may be more fixable than the former.
Notes:
1. BCG does not provide a breakdown for U.S., Canada, and Mexico, so my numbers are a little high if they are taken as an estimate for U.S. only.
2. Includes cash and deposits, money market funds, listed securities held directly or indirectly through managed investments, and other onshore and offshore assets, but exclude the investor’s own businesses, residences, and luxury goods.]
3. Source: Towers Watson
4. Source: EBRI.org IRAs = $1.414 trillion,
5. Source: Foundation Center
6. Source: NACUBO
7. Source: my own count
8. Source: National Center for Charitable Statistics. I am assuming that NCCS is not counting endowments even though they are technically “public charities” per the IRS. Even if they are, it doesn’t affect my grand total much in percentage terms.
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Skorina’s Ultimate Outsourcing List, Version 2.01:
The time has come to update our excellent outsourcing list.
Douglas Appell in Pensions & Investments wrote recently about the steady growth in the number of outsourcing vendors and the variety of options they’re offering to institutional investors.
He reports that demand for outsourced investment services continues to increase and that competition among providers is fierce.
I emphasized these same two points a year ago in my newsletter special edition on outsourcing (See: www.charlesskorina.com, NL#29). Back then I counted forty-five outsourcers with discretionary assets under management.
Since then the established players have been building capabilities, the large consultants have been adding investment talent, and boutique firms have formed to focus on niche opportunities. Our updated list below has 50 firms, and I’m probably still missing a few.
Version 2.0 of our list has been updated with contact names, phone numbers and emails, all confirmed correct as of this week. Give them a call. They would love to hear from you. Tell them Skorina sent you.
Skorina’s Ultimate Outsourcer List, Vers 2.01 – July, 2012
N.B.: AUM amounts represent discretionary only unless otherwise noted
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Agility (Perella Weinberg)
Christopher Bittman, CIO
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New York, NY
(303) 813-7910
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>$2 bn
cbittman@pwpartners.com
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Angeles Investment Advisors
Leslie B. Kautz, Principal
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Santa Monica, CA
(310) 393-6300
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$38 bn, $1.4 bil discretion
lkautz@angelesadvisors.com
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Athena Capital Advisors
Lisette Cooper, CEO
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Lincoln, MA
(781) 274-9300
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$4.1 bn, $2.8 bn discretion
lcooper@athenacapital.com
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Balentine
Jeff Adams, President
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Atlanta, GA
404-537-4800
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$1.4 bn
jadams@balentine.com
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BlackRock
Nancy Everett, Mgn Dir
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New York, NY
212-810-5092
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$55 bn
nancy.everett@blackrock.com
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BNY Mellon Asset Mgmt
Cynthia Steer, Mgn Dir
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New York, NY
(212) 635-7261
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$238 bn family & institutional
cynthiafryer.steer@bnymellon.com
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Cambridge Associates
Deirdre Nectow, Mgn Dir
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Boston, MA
(617) 457-1781
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$7.3 bn discretionary, $115 bn total
dnectow@cambridgeassociates.com
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Clearbrook Financial
Fred Weiss, Mgn Dir
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Princeton, NJ
(212) 683-6686
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$30 bn advisory
fweiss@clrbrk.com
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Commonfund
Sarah E. Clark, Mgn Dir
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Wilton, CT
203-563 -5000
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$12 bn discretion, $8 bil outsourced sclark@cfund.org |
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CornerStone Partners
Don Laing, Senior Partner
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Charlottesville,V (434) 296-1400 |
>$3 bn
dlaing@cstonellc.com
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Covariance Capital Management (TIAA-CREF)
Shannon Morton, Mgn Dir
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Houston, TX
(713) 770-2000
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$1 bn
smorton@covariancecapital.com
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Fiduciary Management Associates
Robert L. Hudon, Jr., Mrktg
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Chicago, IL
(312) 334-0253
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$2 bn
rhudon@fmausa.com
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Fiduciary Research&Consltg
John Boich, Pres & CIO
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San Francisco, CA
(415) 671-4020
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$7.5 bn
john@fiduciaryresearch.com
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Fortress Partners Funds
Alexander Cook, CEO & CIO
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New York, NY
212-798-6076
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$1.8 bn
msnyder@fortress.com
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Fund Evaluation Group
Gary Price, Mgn Principal
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Cincinnati, OH
(513) 977-4400
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$1.9 bn
gprice@feg.com
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Global Endowment Mgmt
Stephanie Lynch, Partner
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Charlotte, NC
(704) 333-8282
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$3.5 bn slynch@globalendowment.com |
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Goldman Sachs
Kane Brenan, Mgn Dir
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New York, NY
(212) 855-9851
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AUM not available
kane.brenan@gs.com
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Hall Capital Partners
Rick Grand-Jean, Mgn Dir
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San Francisco, CA
(415) 288-0544
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$22.4 bn, $2.7 bn institution discretion
rgrandjean@hallcapital.com
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Hewitt EnnisKnupp
Steve Cummings, Principal
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Chicago, IL
(312) 715-1700
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$13.4 bn s.cummings@ennisknupp.com |
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HighVista
Brian Chu, Partner
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Boston, MA
(617) 406-6500
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>$3.5 bn
bchu@highvista.com
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Hirtle Callaghan
Nicole Kraus, Director Institu
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W.Conshohocken
(610) 943-4192
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$22 bn
nkraus@hirtlecallaghan.com
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Investure
Ellen Meyer, Client Relations
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Charlottesville,V (434) 220-0280 |
$9.5 bn
emeyer@investure.com
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J.P. Morgan Asset Mgmt
Monica Issar, Head E & F Group
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New York, NY
(212) 464-2852
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$2.0 trillion, $23 bn outsource
monica.issar@jpmorgan.com
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Makena
Bill Miller, Partner & COO
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Menlo Park, CA
(650) 926-0510
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$16 bn
bmiller@makenacap.com
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Mercer
Sue Crosby, Partner
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New York, NY
(212) 345-9264
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$51 bn
sue.crosby@mercer.com
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Mangham Associates
Joel R. Mangham, Principal
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Charlottesville,V
(434) 973-2223
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$2.3 bn
joel@manghamassociates.com
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Morgan Creek Capital Mgmt
Mark Yusko, CEO & CIO
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Chapel Hill, NC
(919) 933-4004
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$8 bn
myusko@morgancreekcap.com
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Morgan Stanley (Graystone Consulting)
Franco Piarulli, Mgn Dir
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New York, NY
(914) 225-7254
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$22 bn
franco.piarulli@morganstanley.com
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NEPC
Steve Charlton, Partner
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Cambridge, MA
(617) 374-1300
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$2.6 bn
scharlton@nepc.com
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New Providence Asset Mg
Lance Odden, Mgn Dir
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New York, NY
(646) 292-1200
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$2.4 bn
lance@newprov.com
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Northern Trust
Thomas R. Benzmiller, MD
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Chicago, IL
(312) 557-3322
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$40 bn discretion, $20 bn advisory
tb58@ntrs.com
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Okabena Advisors
Christine K. Galloway, CEO
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Minneapolis, MN
(612) 217-6225
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$1.3 bn
cgalloway@okabena.com
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Pacific Global Advisors
David A. Oaten, Mgn Dir
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New York, NY
(212) 405-6400
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$20 bn
david.oaten@pacificga.com
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Partners Capital
Paul Dimitruk, Chr & Partner
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Boston, MA & UK
(617) 292-2575
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$2.8 bn US office, $7.5 bn globally
paul.dimitruk@partners-cap.com
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Post Rock Advisors
Carol B. Einiger, President
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New York, NY
(212) 838-7100
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AUM not available einiger@postrockadvisors.com |
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Pyramis Global Advisors
Michael Barnett, EVP institutional sales
|
Smithfield, RI
(401) 292-4741
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$6.7 bn discretionary, $180 bn global
michael.barnett.pyr@pyramis.com
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Rocaton Investment Advsrs
John Hartman, Mgn Dir
|
Norwalk, CT
(203) 621-1717
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$520 mil discretion, $300 bn advisory
john.hartman@rocaton.com
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Rockefeller Financial
Michael R. Marsh, Dir Nonprofit Invest Services
|
NY & D.C.
(202) 719-3012
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$10 bn discretionary, $34 bn total
mmarsh@rockco.com
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Russell Investments
Joseph Gelly, Jr., Mgn Dir
|
Seattle, WA
(781) 871-8063
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$96 bn
jgelly@russell.com
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Salient Partners
John A. Blaisdell, CEO
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Houston, TX
(713) 993-4675
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$17 bn
jblaisdell@salientpartners.com
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SECOR Asset Management
Tony Kao, Mgn Principal
|
New York, NY
(212) 980-7350
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$7.5 bn global pension advisory
tony@secor-am.com
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Segal Rogerscasey
Peter Gerlings, Sr VP Institu
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Darien, CT
(617) 355-5035
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>$10 bn discretionary
pgerlings@segalrc.com
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SEI
Paul Klauder, VP Bus Dev
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Oaks, PA
(610) 676-2225
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$59 bn
pklauder@seic.com
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Spider Management Co.
Stephen Kneeley, CEO
|
Richmond, VA
(804) 289-6010
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$2.9 bn
skneeley@richmond.edu
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Spruce Private Investors
John Bailey, CEO
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Stamford, CT
(203) 428-2600
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$3.2 bn
jbailey@spruceinvest.com
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State Street Global Advsrs
Kathleen Mann, Sr Mgn Dir
Matt Kelley, VP Outsourcg
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Boston, MA
(617) 664-2141
(617) 664-2433
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$41 bn
kathleen_mann@ssga.com
matthew_kelley@ssga.com
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Strategic Investment Group
Deborah Boedicker, Partner
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Arlington, VA
(703) 236-1620
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$30.3 bn, 70% discretionary
dboedicker@strategicgroup.com
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Towers Watson
Tom Brust, Head Bus Dev
|
New York, NY
(917) 538-3899
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$50 bn
tom.brust@towerswatson.com
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TIFF
Mike Winter, Head of Member Services
|
W.Conshohocken
(610) 684-8200
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$9.2 bn full discretion
mwinter@tiff.org
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UBS AG
William Drobny, Head Institutional Marketing
|
Chicago, IL
(312) 525-7100
|
$12.8 bn
william.drobny@ubs.com
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Wilshire Associates
Julia K. Bonafede, President Consulting
|
Santa Monica, CA
(310) 451-3051
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$9.7 bn discretion, $720 bn total
jbonafede@wilshire.com
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Wurts & Associates
Jeffrey C. Scott, CIO
|
Seattle, WA
(206) 622-3700
|
$1.3 bn
jscott@wurts.com
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Parting shot:
Is it the end of the day yet?
The end of the day is something I look forward to. I get a workout, a drink, maybe some time with my lovely wife.
What I don’t look forward to is one more tin-eared writer telling me how things stand “at the end of the day.” But they all do, don’t they? They can’t seem to help themselves.
Eric Jackson writing for Forbes recently listed some of the worst clichés in business writing. Actually, the cunning devil asked his readers to send them in, so his piece just wrote itself. Why didn’t I think of that?
Have I ever used any of them? No comment. But one tries not to.
Some clichés are innocuous, but some should be at least corporal offenses.
I do not, for instance, ever again, want to hear some looming difficulty described as a tsunami. No mas, all right? If you tell me there’s a tsunami coming, I want to look out the window and see a damn big wave.
And I’m deeply tired of websites and resumes which proclaim how “passionate” someone is about his business. “Passion” should be confined to those paperbacks that ladies hide in their purses: the ones featuring bare-chested hunks and swooning ingénues.
And all the “road warriors” need to be hunted down and de-commissioned. The phrase was invented to make salesmen feel like post-Apocalyptic bad-asses.
That guy in a wrinkled blazer pulling his suitcase through the airport is not a road warrior. It’s just me.
Some choice clichés spotted by Mr. Jackson’s readers, with some of my own commentary:
01 Rogue trader: A trader employed by a firm with no working risk controls.
02 It’s a win-win: I won. Now I’m going to try to convince you that you won, too!
03 Paradigm shift: We’re losing money, but it’s not our fault. The damn paradigm keeps shifting.
04 We’re data-driven: We make a lot of decisions here; some are based on actual facts.
05 It was a perfect storm: We totally screwed up, but we can’t control the weather! (see: Paradigm shift).
06 It’s a one-off: We’ll never get away with doing this twice!
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