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Charles Skorina & Company

● RETAINED EXECUTIVE SEARCH ●

We recruit board members, chief investment officers and senior investment professionals
for endowments, foundations, family offices and institutional asset managers

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President/Entrepreneur: Large multi-asset manager, western U.S.

INTERVIEWS

Rukaiyah Adams CIO Meyer Memorial Trust

Jason Bull joins U Georgia $1.2bn Fdn as first CIO

Mr Bull, spent 10 yrs at $6.7bn Emory endowment, x GS, x SEI, MBA Emory, BS Eastern Mich U

Kelsey Deshler joins Carleton College as CIO

Ms Deshler, x global head of manager research at BlackRock, x Credit Suisse, BS U Minn, MS NYU, Minn native

Brian H. Pellegrino, new CIO at Georgia Tech Foundation

Mr Pellegrino, CIO $35bn UPS pension, joined $2bn Georgia Tech Fdn in Jan 2018. MBA Rutgers, BS Montclair State University

Suzanne Brenner, from Met Museum CIO to Brown Brothers Harriman

Ms. Brenner, x co-CIO at Metropolitan Museum of Art joined BBH as CIO. x Rockefeller Fdn, x QCS, x Ernst & Young. BA CUNY Queens College

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SKORINA IN THE NEWS

9-19-17 Bloomberg News: Harvard’s Investment Chief Says 8.1% Return Signals ‘Deep Structural Problems’

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/harvard-ceo-says-8-1-return-signals-deep-structural-problems

9-18-17 Harvard Crimson: Strong Public Markets May Bode Well for Harvard

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/9/18/peer-institutions-post-results/

1-26-17 Boston Globe: MIT’s endowment posts fourth-best returns

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/01/26/mit-endowment-posts-fourth-best-returns/YErvAo2hVqwCSBR5wH1AFO/story.html

1-25-17 The New York Times: Harvard Makes Changes in Managing a Lagging Endowment

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/business/harvard-endowment-management-changes.html

1-25-17 Financial Times: Harvard’s $36bn endowment to hire external managers

https://www.ft.com/content/64711864-e32d-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

What does it cost to run an investment office?

In early 2016 certain Congressional committees sent letters to 65 major private universities asking for information about their endowments.

It was worded as a polite request, but it came from people who could, for instance, compel the endowments to adopt a strict spending rate (like private foundations) instead of the more flexible regime they currently enjoy as "charities." Needless to say, the schools all coughed up the information forthwith.

Apparently, this data-dump just went into filing cabinets, and neither the schools nor Congress have been eager to share those reports with the general public.

But our clients (nonprofit boards and "Wall Street" asset managers) find this information useful, so we scrounged up copies of 15 of the responding letters from various sources. The other 50 schools have kept theirs out of sight.

We were especially curious to see what the schools had to say about endowment management costs, which has always been a cloudy issue for us.

Commonfund agrees. In a 2015 study they opined that:

...unlike other factors that affect investment returns, such as asset allocation and the many types of operational and investment risk, costs are almost certainly the least well understood.

See: Commonfund Institute: Understanding the cost of Investment Management (October 2005).

As we said in our OCIO report, the perceived cost of managing the endowment is a major factor in the decision to outsource, or not to.

It's not the only factor, but a big one. But how can a board make that decision if they don't know whether they're spending more or less than their peers? And, whether outsourcing will actually save them any money?

Investment returns can be benchmarked to the second decimal place, but the costs of managing those investments are harder to come by.

So, we've done our own analysis of the cost data reported by those 15 schools. It has some limitations, but we seem to be the only ones to have ransacked these letters.

Where do chief investment officers come from?

Every year there are about 50 to 100 US nonprofit (tax-exempt) and family office CIO searches and that number will climb as more ultra-high-net-worth families (over $100 million AUM) form offices, create foundations, and hire professional investment talent.

PwC forecasts a near doubling in global AUM over nine years, from $84.9 trillion in 2016 to $145.4 trillion in 2025, and predicts the US share of this global wealth pie to swell from $46.9 trillion to approximately $71.2 trillion over the same period.

But where will families and institutions find these investment heads? Asset owners want to know where to find good candidates, portfolio managers want to know what their chances are of landing a CIO job, and marketers for external money managers want to know whom to call.

Some families and institutions will select the OCIO option (outsourced chief investment officer) and place their assets with an outside firm, but most will choose internal management.

As search consultants, we recruit and fill positions within three broad categories: nonprofit institutions, family offices, and the for-profit investment world of Wall Street investment banks, insurance companies, mutual fund managers, RIAs, hedge funds, and consulting firms.

All public pension systems, most endowments, and many foundations, health systems, associations, charities and corporate pension plans publish their fund returns and we use that information to rank and identify the top performing funds, chief investment officers, and senior asset managers. Find the best performing funds and you are likely to find the best talent.

Most nonprofit funds over $1bn and about one third between $500 million and $1bn have CIOs. In 2011, we counted about 1,300 CIOs and heads of investments at tax exempt institutions.

Today we track about 1,100 chief investment officers and another 800 up-and-comers in the nonprofit sector as the increase in endowments, foundations, and other nonprofits with a billion or more in AUM has been offset by a drop in the number of corporate DB plans.

Family offices: the best CIOs you’ve never heard of

Family offices employ excellent investment managers. The trouble is, it’s hard to find them.

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.

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