I never wanted this for you. We just ran out of time, Vito Corleone ― The Godfather

Our spring 2025 Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) directory update features one-hundred-seven service providers with pertinent particulars on each. We include names, numbers, emails, and titles of business executives at each firm ready to take your call.

Our goal is to help families and institutions locate, review, and connect with full-service discretionary outsource investment managers. Our directory makes it easy for prospective clients to reach them. No ads, no paywall, no charge.

Time and Money

Time is a beguiling thing. “The relative progression of existence” posited Einstein. “Mostly a human affair” adds theoretical physicist John Kitching. But for the rest of us, aging is more akin to Hemingway’s famous line, “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

Succession, like the passage of time, is something most families and institutions are aware of, but surprisingly few do much about it.

To be fair, sometimes age and events disrupt the best laid plans. A few weeks ago, I met with a notable, highly successful founder and entrepreneur who wished to discuss recruiting a new family office head. Due to this individual’s distinctive longevity, past occupants in the position are no longer with us.

This patriarch is still sharp as a tack and busy juggling ideas and opportunities, but time is short, there’s much to do, and the odds of replacing a time-tested veteran with a like-minded newbie and bringing this fresh hire up to speed in months, not years, are growing longer by the day.

Planning ahead

In the OCIO business it takes years to establish a presence, polish services, and build a solid investment record. Few firms manage the task. Even fewer adapt, revitalize, and deliver across generations.

Recent years have seen a steady stream of outsourcing hopefuls merge with better-resourced patrons as founders age out and cash in. Recent capitulants include Hall Capital, NEPC, Agility, Truvvo, Ellwood Associates, New Providence, CornerStone, PFM, and Permit Capital.

But now and then a firm manages the transition. Hirtle Callaghan, a pioneering OCIO serving philanthropic families and mission-driven nonprofits, opened for business thirty-seven years ago and recently finished fine-tuning their plans for the next fifty years.

Jon Hirtle remains Executive Chairman and works full-time, but the firm has transitioned to a distributed leadership structure with firm-wide support to provide stability and continuity. A three-member management committee now leads the firm, buttressed by ten managing directors and thirty directors.

While controlling interest remains within the Hirtle family – two generations of family members currently in leadership positions – the firm continues to parse out equity and mentor next-gen talent.

There were a few twists and turns along the way, but clients are pleased and the future looks bright.

The sunny side

It turns out, when time flies by, we’re usually having fun. That’s according to a University of Nevada, Las Vegas report.

“We tell time in our own experience by things we do, things that happen to us,” said James Hyman, a UNLV associate professor of psychology and the study’s senior author. “When we’re still and we’re bored, time goes very slowly because we’re not doing anything or nothing is happening.

On the contrary, when a lot of events happen, each one of those activities is advancing our brains forward. And if this is how our brains objectively tell time, then the more that we do and the more that happens to us, the faster time goes.”

In other words, we can choose between a seemingly short but fruitful life, or one long boring slog. Me, I think I’ll fruitfully keep on recruiting.

― Charles Skorina

(download OCIO Directory only as PDF)