12-22-20 The Wall Street Journal: Calpers Seeking an Investment Chief with Staying Power 

Lisa Howie, new CIO at Smith College

12yrs Yale investment office, AB, molecular biophysics Yale ’00 & MBA Yale ’08

Amy Falls, moves to Northwestern University as CIO

x CIO Rockefeller U, x CIO Phillips Academy, x MD Morgan Stanley, MPP Harvard, BA, Georgetown

OCIO Growth Tops 15.8 Percent in 2020

Our latest Outsourced Chief Investment Officer report features a list of 104 OCIO firms, each with updated contact information and AUM numbers. It’s the most comprehensive and accurate available.

We also have a deep-dive interview with Jon Hirtle, a pivotal leader in the industry he helped create.

We invite both institutions and high-net-worth families to check out our list – below and on our website – and call a few of the firms if you’re in the market for money-management help.

It may not be as exciting as Tinder, but it could still be the start of a beautiful new relationship!

Observations on a Plague Year

2020 was a strange and tumultuous year.

But, after trudging through a cruel pandemic, rancorous politics, and vertiginous markets, there still seems to be some hope left in the world.

In the OCIO industry, for example, managers have amassed an additional $431 billion AUM over the last twelve months, topping out at a record $2.812 Trillion as of 30 June 2020.

That’s a year-over-year growth of 15.8 percent!

And yet, as we’ve noted in past reports, the same big six  – Aon, Blackrock, Goldman Sachs, Mercer, Russell, and Willis Towers Watson – still manage almost half (45%) the OCIO money.

A few firms sold themselves to larger players in 2020. Athena Capital Advisors joined Franklin Templeton, Focus Financial Partners acquired CornerStone Partners, and private equity investors CC Capital and Motive Partners teamed up to buy Wilshire Associates.

We’ve been charting the growth of the OCIO industry for over a decade in our annual OCIO reports and the heirs of Hirtle, big and small, seem (mostly) to have flourished.

Jon Hirtle of Hirtle Callaghan hatched the concept of an “independent investment office” managing family and institutional money over thirty years ago.

The idea was conceptually simple, but not necessarily easy to execute – or to market: take the proven success of sophisticated multi-billion-dollar investment offices and deliver those same benefits to smaller institutions and high-net-worth families at fees they could afford.

Four decades later we see not only independent firms like Hirtle Callaghan and Alan Biller and Associates, but also giants like JPMorgan, Blackrock, Vanguard, and AON; and boutiques like Edgehill and Disciplina. It’s a big, wonderfully diverse industry and, as we’ve seen, still growing briskly.

Jon Hirtle and the OCIO Juggernaut

Mr. Hirtle was born in a small town outside of Pittsburgh. He had a very American boyhood; working with horses, learning to fish, camping with the Boy Scouts, and playing football.

At fifteen he and a classmate hiked several hundred miles on the Appalachian Trail – by themselves. The following summer he landed a job in Wyoming after typing (remember typing?) 100 letters to all the ranches advertising in the back of Outdoor Life magazine.

That first summer in Wyoming he dug ditches, built fence, rode broncs (the fun part according to Jon) and fell in love with the west.

As a Penn State undergrad he studied pre-veterinary medicine, walked onto the football team, appeared in musicals, joined a fraternity and, most importantly, met Debby, his wife of over 40 years and counting.

After graduation, Jon joined the Marines where he earned honors in officer training, led troops overseas, trained recruits at Parris Island and finally, returned to Penn State to recruit more candidates for officer training and earn an MBA.

After the Marine Corps he headed for Wall Street and Goldman Sachs.

And that’s where the story of OCIO begins.

Mark L. Baumgartner, joins Carnegie Corp as CIO

7yrs CIO Inst for Advanced Study, 5yrs Ford Fdn, ex Morgan Stanley, ex Boston Consulting Grp, PhD Mech & Aerospace Eng Princeton, BSE Aerospace Eng U Florida