Endowments are expanding following their arrival on the East Coast, where investment talent is easier to find.
Adding Staff
Michigan State is hiring one or two investment directors over the next school year. Lehigh, which in 2017 moved near Times Square from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, plans to add a senior investment analyst as the fifth person on the team, according to CIO Kristin Agatone. And Hamilton, which shifted to Greenwich from the rural town of Clinton, New York, has a new director of investments starting in the fall.
“Managers are not coming to Clinton,’’ said Anne Dinneen, who took the Hamilton CIO job in 2015 and oversees about $1 billion. “It’s become more of an access game if you want to have top-quartile performance.’’
The growing number of endowments clustering around Wall Street provides another perk: networking.
Dinneen is part of a lunch club of about a dozen CIOs of endowments and foundations who meet every few months at rotating conference rooms to exchange ideas. Joseph Bohrer, the first CIO of Lafayette’s $833 million fund, goes to the lunches. He opened the Pennsylvania-based school’s office on Park Avenue in Manhattan five years ago.
“It’s really vital to have contacts with other people who have the same job,’’ said Lucy Rinaldi, CIO of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, who started the club about five years ago. “People will say, ‘Do you know about this manager?’’’
--With assistance from Michael McDonald.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.