Bridgewater Hires Ex-Apple Exec as Co-CEO

Jon RubinsteinBridgewater Associates has hired former Apple executive Jon Rubinstein as co-CEO, the hedge fund confirmed.

Rubinstein will formally join in May as part of the firm’s “management transition… from Ray [Dalio] to the next generation of Bridgewater leaders” over the next four to five years, according to client memos acquired by CIO.

The new co-CEO will take over the position currently held by Greg Jensen, who also serves as co-CIO. Jensen will continue as the co-CIO with his full attention to investment responsibilities.

“In a nutshell, we concluded that it made the most sense to have Greg spend less time on management and more time on investments and that we needed to bring in an exceptional co-CEO with a strong tech focus to supplement the existing leadership,” the client memo said.

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Rubinstein worked with Steve Jobs for almost 16 years and was instrumental in the development of the iMac and the iPod during his time at Apple.

He also served as the CEO, president, and board chairman of the personal digital assistants company Palm until its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard (HP).

Rubinstein was most recently the senior vice president of product innovation for the personal system group at HP.

Bridgewater emphasized the importance of technology, “especially since one of our major strategic initiatives in the coming years is to continue building out the systematized decision-making that has been successful in our investment area and to extend it to our management as well.”

Leading investors challenge the UK regulator to look again at the rules regarding daily pricing at the Pension and Lifetime Savings Association’s conference.

Do major asset owners need to get prices for their assets every day?

Two UK pensions have put this question to the country’s regulator—and were left wanting for an answer.

Leandros Kalisperas, head of credit at the Universities Superannuation Scheme, challenged the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Interim Chief Executive Tracey McDermott over the need for daily liquidity regulations during a panel debate at the Pension and Lifetime Savings Association’s conference in Edinburgh.

“How conscious are you that some of the regulation around liquidity and daily dealing potentially fuels a lack of competition, and is not in end users’ best interests?” Kalisperas asked. “The ability to switch managers is often not really that important when saved over 30 or 40 years, but it does seem to have counterproductive consequences.”

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Railpen CEO Chris Hitchen supported Kalisperas over what he called an “irrational desire for liquidity,” adding that “it doesn’t really matter if the price of a security is right this minute or this second.”

“It seems [daily liquidity] suits a part of the investment chain—market makers, dealers, high-frequency traders—to persuade me that they’re doing me a favor when they’re effectively charging my members for price discovery,” Hitchen said. “We don’t need price discovery.”

The FCA, along with other regulators in Europe, is in the process of reviewing regulation to ensure that it is not unnecessarily stifling innovation or causing detriment to end users. However, McDermott declined to respond directly to Kalisperas’ question.

“We are very conscious that we need to look at regulations so we are sure they are having the desired effect,” McDermott said. “In some cases there may be negative effects for some parts of the process and we may decide that’s a price we have to pay. There may be areas we believe we need to make tweaks or make changes.”

She emphasized the FCA’s specific mandate to promote and facilitate effective competition, and promised that “if there are things regulators have created that get in the way of delivering value to end investors without a commensurate benefit, then we have to look at them.”