The Worlds Best Institutional Investors? It’s Not That Simple

There is no place like New York for exceptional investment professionals.

Yet with the world’s best and brightest just a cab-ride away, the challenge of building superior investment teams that can endure and outperform over a decade or more is daunting and seldom achieved.

Consistent, multi-decade superiority isn’t impossible, but it’s exceedingly rare, and many redoubtable firms have just vanished.

There are a very few, semi-mythical beasts like David F. Swensen and Warren Buffett, of course.

Swensen built a process for identifying superior outside managers, cementing relationships, and staying with them as long as they are judged to have the edge.  He was also an innovator with first-mover advantage in many respects which can’t be replicated.

One of my professors at The University of Chicago once remarked that some money managers seem to have the touch.  And we can theorize, not always correctly, about how they do it.  But most of them have a run bracketed by a certain period or a set of conditions, and then they are gone.

Why is this?

Paul Wachter, the outgoing investment chair of the University of California Regents, was recently asked by Leanna Orr, in an interview for CIO Magazine, about the criteria used by the UC regents during their search in 2014 for a chief investment officer. 

Mr. Wachter listed three principal qualities the UC board looked for in a candidate.

Number one: Organizational skills.  Someone with serious organizational skills, who could work effectively with a big institution like the UC system.

Number two: Personality.  Someone with the personality to work constructively with all of those different constituents, from the board and president to student groups

Number three: Investment skill. 

But he added a caveat to number three.

Michigan State University has hired their first chief investment officer

Michigan State is on a roll.

In college football they’re rated number three in the country and still in contention for the national championship.  And, they’re undefeated and rated number one in early-season basketball.

Not bad; but we’ve got even bigger news.

My friend Philip Zecher has just been appointed MSU’s first-ever chief investment officer, reporting directly to Dr. Lou Anna K. Simon, MSU’s president. The trustees announced the appointment on Friday and Phil called me up to give me the official word.

Phil is a low-profile guy with an impressive background, but he’s now moving up into a more prominent position: running $2.3 billion of the school’s $2.7 billion endowment. ($400 million resides in the MSU Foundation and will continue to be run by that board.)

So, this letter may help to introduce him to the foundation and endowment community and to the asset managers who will be doing business with him.

Rebutting the Endowment Critics:

The “Hoarding” Hoax and “Excessive” Private-equity Fees

Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of San Diego, expressed outrage this summer that Harvard, Yale, and other well-endowed schools have been “hoarding” their tax-exempt endowment cash, mostly, he alleges, at the expense of students.

He and others in his camp argue that Congress should override the judgement of university leaders and compel them to spend at least 8 percent of their endowment funds every year (instead of the current average of about 4.5 percent).

Had congress adopted this plan in 1990, these critics calculate that the Yale endowment would be two fifths the size it is now, $10 billion versus today’s $24 billion. 

But “sky-high tuition increases” would supposedly stop.

Are we missing something here?

Robert F. Wallace, the new head of Stanford Management Company, has been aggressively culling his staff since he was appointed in late March.

This has not gone un-noticed by the media, and we can now name more names and connect more dots.

Last year, before Mr. Wallace succeeded John Powers, SMC had about 22 investment staffers (excluding operations, HR, the CFO, etc.).

Four were in the top tier as Managing Directors.  Now only one of that original group remains.

Departing MDs were: Craig Blanchard, Saguna Malhotra, Martina Poquet, and Wafa Wei.  

(Ms. Poquet was reaching retirement age, so her departure this month may not have anything to do with the CEO shift.  Mr. Blanchard left last year, after the announced departure of Mr. Powers, but before the arrival of Mr. Wallace.  In January he joined Makena Capital, an asset manager founded by Michael McCaffery, former CEO of the Stanford Management Company.  So, these two moves should not be construed as part of the “great purge”.)

Last year there were seven staffers with the Director title; now only four remain.

Departing Directors were: Vera Kotlik, Karen Horn Welch, and Joshua Richter.

Last year there were four staffers titled Manager; three remain.

The departing Manager: Ben Chiquoine,

At the junior level there are four Associates/Senior Associates and, as far as we know, all four are still in place.

So, six senior staffers (ignoring Ms. Poquet and Mr. Blanchard) have left since April and we believe they were all pushed out by Mr. Wallace.  That’s about one third of the pre-Wallace senior staff roster.  And, we suspect, one or two more may be contemplating an early departure.

Managing Directors at SMC have a base salary of approximately $400K and a bonus opportunity of another $400K, for a total comp of about $800K.  Directors have a base of about $250K and a bonus opportunity of $250K, for a total comp of about $500K.

The departures were partly offset by two new faces Mr. Wallace brought with him.

Greg Milani, who was Mr. Wallace’s right-hand man at Alta Advisers in London, was appointed Senior Managing Director, which makes him the highest-ranking staffer.  

Mr. Wallace also tapped Jay Kang as a new Managing Director.  Mr. Kang is a Yale grad (class of 2002, same year as Mr. Wallace) who worked at the Yale Investment Office under David F. Swensen.  More recently Mr. Kang was number-two at the Hilton Foundation in L.A. under CIO Randy Kim (who is another Swensen/YIO alumnus).