Home - Charles Skorina & Company Charles Skorina & Company

Charles Skorina & Company

● RETAINED EXECUTIVE SEARCH ●

Our Clients: Boards & Trustees, C-suite Executives, Family Offices
Our Services: we recruit board members, chief investment officers, senior asset managers

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

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

Brooke Jones, Bryn Mawr College’s first Chief Investment Officer

8yrs at Carnegie Corp, 3yr Stanford MC, Fulbright Scholar, MBA Stanford, BS, U Penn Wharton

__________________________________

SKORINA IN THE NEWS

5-7-21 BloombergNews: Yale Names Alex Banker Interim Endowment Chief, Plans Search

5-6-21 The New York Times: David Swensen, Who Revolutionized Endowment Investing, Dies at 67

5-6-21 Forbes: Yale Endowment Chief David Swensen Leaves Legacy of Top College Investment Leaders

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

2-04-20 Yale News: US Education endowment hit 8.5 percent for the past decade

Endowment Performance Rankings 2020 – Strange Days

Our 2020 endowment performance report features ten-year returns for one hundred and ten institutions -- the latest available. We consider a ten-year span to be a rigorous and revealing measure of the strength of an institution’s oversight and long-term investment abilities.

However, as always, there are caveats.

Timing

Most endowments close their books for the fiscal year on June 30 then prepare for the auditors. Soon thereafter, usually in mid to late fall, the schools release preliminary performance results.

These numbers are “official” but Non-Time Matched because private market performance reporting – real estate, private equity, etc. – lags public market results by three to six months, and sometimes longer.

Usually, this does not matter because public and private market investments tend to move pretty much in sync.

However, in spring 2020 with covid on the loose, the June 30th fiscal close missed a big uptick in private market valuations because those numbers were not ready and therefore not reported to the investment offices. This hit big endowments hard, those with heavy allocations to alternatives.

Costs

Not all returns are equal.

Some schools report their numbers net of all costs including external management fees, internal office costs, and the endowment tax.

However, many endowments when computing their returns subtract external management fees but not office costs or the endowment tax.

Over a ten-year period that makes a difference.

Turnover

Turnover affects performance. Only about a third of the one hundred CIOs on our list have held the top investment position for ten years or more and they tend to have the best performance

For example, in our chart below, ten of our top fifteen endowments by 10-year performance had investment heads with ten years or more in tenure.

A Block-buster Year for Pensions and Nonprofits

Public pensions, endowments, and foundations will announce blow-out performance when returns are released this fall.

Thanks to bold moves and celestial markets the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021 will be a block-buster for the ages.

A little over a year ago, around March 2020 when markets fell off a cliff, veteran chief investment officers scrambled to rebalance and put their extra cash to work, a gutsy call but not without precedent.

Modern portfolio theory – and the 2009 crash – taught CIOs that when markets crater, investors big and small should rebalance (i.e., buy everything in sight).

Experience, history, and luck were on their side. As of April 30, 2021, the S&P 500 has had a one-year total return of 45.98% and the Barclays Agg ETF returned a minus 0.27%, so a plain vanilla 70/30 portfolio scored about 32.1%.

As a result, equity-heavy, risk-on pensions will have their best returns in years. We could see thirty percent and more.

Endowment and foundation CIOs should do almost as well thanks to eye-popping, co-invested venture and private equity returns and good old-fashion leverage. E&Fs may hold less equity and more alts, but many private market pay-offs were extraordinary.

On the other hand, for those CIOs and investment committees who missed the 2009 memo and panicked — slashing equity exposure then belatedly rebalancing at much higher prices — things aren’t looking so good!

Sub-par returns don’t sit well with trustees and donors. There will be consequence.

CIO Turnover: Pink Slips and Greener Pastures

Poor performance is not the only reason for a rash of CIO departures over the coming year. Early retirement is in the air.

Many investment heads have grown accustomed to the no-commute, work-from-anywhere lifestyle during covid and they don’t look forward to rejoining what they left behind.

They saved their money, invested wisely, and now have a healthy retirement cushion. Many have told us privately that they plan to retire early.

Registered Investment Advisors hear the same thing. Over the past year we’ve spoken with over two-hundred RIAs and they say that among clients in their fifties, early retirement is the number one question on their minds. “I don’t want the commute, stress, and hassles any more. Do I have enough to retire now?

For those of us in the search business, it’s going to be a very busy year.

When the Music Stopped

CHARLES A. SKORINA & COMPANY works with leaders of Endowments, Foundations, and Institutional Asset Managers to recruit Board Members, Executives Officers, Chief Investment Officers and Fund Managers.

Mr. Skorina also publishes THE SKORINA LETTER, a widely-read professional publication providing news, research and analysis on institutional asset managers and tax-exempt funds.

Our Practice:

• We recruit Board Members and Executive Officers, Chief Investment Officers and Senior Asset Managers.

• Our research and analytics are backed by over thirty years of hands-on recruiting experience and an unrivaled personal network.

• We collect performance, compensation, and background data on most senior institutional investment professionals in the U.S. and the funds they manage. We analyze that data to construct profiles of those managers and their funds, identify best-in-class people, and map their career trajectories.

• We share our research and insights in a widely-read professional newsletter – THE SKORINA LETTER – and website – www.charlesskorina.com.

• The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Thompson Reuters, Financial Times (Fundfire), Institutional Investor, Pensions & Investments, Private Equity International, and the institutional investment community use our research and analysis. Skorina has been interviewed on chief investment officer compensation issues on Bloomberg TV.

• Our work is regularly re-printed in Allaboutalpha.com and other industry magazines, blogs, and third- party web postings.

• We focus specifically and effectively on the world we know: Board members and Executive Officers, Chief Investment Officers, and Senior Asset Managers at institutional investment firms and funds – including sovereign wealth funds, endowments, foundations, pension funds, banks, investment banks, outsourced chief investment officer firms (OCIO), and sell-side money managers.

Prior to founding CASCo, Mr. Skorina worked for JP MorganChase in New York City and Chicago and for Ernst & Young in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Skorina graduated from Culver Academies, attended Michigan State University and The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey where he graduated with a BA, and earned a MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago. He served in the US Army as a Russian Linguist stationed in Japan.

Charles A. Skorina & Co. is based in Tucson, Arizona.

Download vCard

Contact