MOHAMED EL-ERIAN: PIMCO’s heir-apparent goes missing

The noisiest recent CIO turnover was at a sell-side firm, but one which is closely watched by many institutions.  PIMCO’s CEO and Co-CIO Mohamed El-Erian has been replaced — or at least succeeded by — a whole roomful of folks.  El-Erian, who reportedly earned $100 million in 2011, announced his departure in January and was gone by March 1^st.  He has no job in prospect except a part-time gig as a consultant to PIMCO’s German parent Allianz SE.

AN OLD-SCHOOL CIO DEFENDS OLD-SCHOOL PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

Mr. Robert M. Maynard, chief investment officer of Idaho PERS, takes exception to the whole “endowment model” approach to portfolio management, raising some points that we haven’t seen articulated so clearly elsewhere.

Peter H. Ammon: Another Yale vet lands another top job:

Surfing the sustainable investing L-curve: A noble way to lose money:

Even if you’re the very model of a modern money manager, kitted out with a Sustainable Investing Officer, and all; what would a bold plunge into a green investing model have done for your returns in recent years?

Disinvesting in logic:

The titanic war over anthropogenic global warming seems to have spilled over into our own peaceful little shire.

Certain anti-AGW campaigners have noticed that a diversified stock portfolio allocates 10 percent or more to the energy sector, and they are shocked.  This spring they showed up on campuses demanding that endowments dump their fossil-fuel-tainted assets forthwith.

Punching above their weight: The Skorina Top 20 Midsize Endowments:

The NACUBO and Commonfund people do great work putting out annual statistics on endowments in their NCSE studies.  But they only report investment returns for statistical aggregates and those don’t tell the whole story.

Our analysis of mid-sized endowments reveals that, although it’s good to be big, it’s not decisive for investment performance.  In fact, some of these mid-sized overachievers, produced industry-leading returns.

Most of the high-performers on both lists have a full-time, in-house investment professional. A chief investment officer or director of investments (DOI) is specifically tasked to endowment matters at 15 out of 20 on the 5-year list, and at 18 out of 20 on the 3-year list.  We think this is a key factor in generating consistently good investment performance over time.