Home - Charles Skorina & Company Charles Skorina & Company

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

ABOUT

THE SKORINA LETTER : Sign-up
News & Research for Institutional Investors

SEARCHES

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

INTERVIEWS

Rukaiyah Adams CIO Meyer Memorial Trust

David Wallace, first dedicated CIO at Pomona College

Mr. Wallace, joined Pomona’s investment office ($2.4bn) in 2012 after 6 years as finance/portfolio manager at World Vision. MBA/BQ Azusa Pacific University

Srinivas “Srini” Pulavarti, heads east to Emory as CIO

Mr. Pulavarti moves to Emory in Atlanta after 5 yrs at UCLA. x Spider Mgmt, x Citi, x Johns Hopkins. MS Marquette, BS Bangalore.

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

__________________________________

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

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 rise 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

OCIO assets near $2 trillion after six-month 17.4% jump

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

They include four new listings: Deutsche Bank with $15.5 billion, Ellwood Associates with $1.2 billion, LCG Associates with $0.382 billion, and Ballentine Partners with $6.6 billion in discretionary OCIO assets.

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 have it on good authority that this was a major factor in their choosing to outsource.

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.

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