Charles Skorina & Company

Eighty-one firms have updated their AUM and contact information for our latest Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) list.

Our total reported OCIO assets have grown 17.4 percent in just six months.  That's double the year-over-year increase we measured over all of 2017.  And, almost all of that is organic growth in firms we were already covering.

That's what we call exponential growth!

While we're talking OCIO, we should note a major deal reported just last week: the American National Red Cross in Washington, D.C. tapped Cambridge Associates to manage its pension and endowment assets.  That's about $3 billion total, which any of these firms would have been happy to land.  So, congrats to our friend Margaret Chen and her team at CA's OCIO shop.

The Red Cross deal is interesting from a headhunter's point of view because investment performance seems to have been good under former CIO Greg Williamson (who left in April).  But, as a non-profit, ANRC is obliged to report the CIO compensation on IRS filings for all the world to see.  As a public charity soliciting donations, the board is sensitive about exhibiting that number

We also note a big move for Catherine Keating of Commonfund which is OCIO-relevant.  She's gone from running OCIO money for non-profits to serving BNY Mellon's HNW customers ($2 million minimum).  Which is sort of where she started.  Before Commonfund she spent twenty years at JPMorgan Chase in investment-management/private banking jobs.

Fortunately, Commonfund had a big gun - their formidably-credentialed chief investment officer Mark Anson - ready to pick up the reins as their new president and CEO.  We wish him luck in this increasingly-competitive niche.

Mr. Williamson's total W2 comp at the Red Cross was $650,000 in calendar 2016, including a $250,000 performance bonus for managing about $2.9 billion.  And that's reasonable pay, in our opinion, for the size of the job and his credentials.

The whole issue of disclosing investment-staff comp is a ticklish subject in the non-profit world.  Journalists recently went to court to flush out Erik Lundberg's full salary at the University of Michigan, even though state law seems to require disclosure of salaries at public universities.  (We will look at that interesting episode in our upcoming report on endowment CIO compensation.)

Whatever the reasons, Cambridge Associates has the resources and track record to handle the $850 million endowment and $2 billion pension; and the Red Cross board probably feels better now that those investment-management salaries are invisible.

Our OCIO coverage continues further below.  It includes our updated list of all vendors and an analysis of industry growth.