Doris Duke Charitable Foundation CIO Jeffrey Heil to Retire

From left; Jeffrey Heil and Leena Bhutta

Jeffrey Heil, CIO of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF), will retire at the end of the year after 18 years at the post. Deputy CIO Leena Bhutta has been named as his successor.

The foundation’s endowment has grown 50%, from $1.6 billion in 2003 to $2.4 billion under Heil’s stewardship, and he has overseen the distribution of more than $1.2 billion. As DDCF’s first CIO, Heil led the diversification of the foundation’s portfolio and established an impact investing program.

“Jeff has been as responsible as anyone for the progress and growth of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and its affiliated organizations over the past two decades,” Sam Gill, president and CEO of the foundation, said in a statement.

Prior to joining Doris Duke, Heil was co-head of investments at the University of California for six years and before that was vice president, equity investments at Victory Capital Management for three years. Prior to Victory Capital, Heil was a corporate finance consultant at McKinsey & Co., and before that he was manager, investment valuation at Arthur Andersen & Co. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Ohio University and an MBA in finance at New York University.

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“There is a simple reason that I have been at the foundation for 18 years—it has been more than a job, fulfilling me personally and professionally,” Heil said in a statement. “To do well while doing good has been rewarding in every way that it sounds. So, as I look forward to the next chapter of my life, closing this one is bittersweet, but made better by the confidence and pleasure I have in seeing my friend and co-worker Leena Bhutta become my successor.”

Bhutta has been on the fast track at Doris Duke since joining the foundation in 2019 as an investment officer. She was promoted to senior investment officer one year later and promoted again, to deputy CIO, less than a year after that. She will have been in her current position for a little more than a year when she takes over the investment decision-making for the foundation Jan. 1, 2022.

“Leena is the only choice to succeed Jeff,” said Gill. “She brings the vision, drive and creativity that will be essential amidst this period of unprecedented market uncertainty and in meeting the new demands on philanthropic endowments to advance impact.”

Prior to coming to Doris Duke, Bhutta was director of alternative investments at the Hollyhock Foundation for nearly seven years and before that was a senior research analyst at Joho Capital. She started her career at Goldman Sachs & Co. as an investment banking analyst.

Bhutta earned a B.A. in economics and mathematics at Wellesley College and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She also serves on the boards of NYC Arts in Education Roundtable and the McCarton Foundation, an organization helping children with autism or developmental delays.

“It is an absolute privilege to be taking over the stewardship of the portfolio at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation from Jeff,” said Bhutta in a statement. “Jeff has been an incredible mentor, and we will be working together to ensure a smooth transition for the continued success of the endowment.”

Tags: chief investment officers, CIO, DDCF, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Jeffrey Heil, Leena Bhutta, Sam Gill

“The waiting is the hardest part.” Or so Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers astutely commented. But on Wall Street, waiting for the Federal Reserve is actually excruciating. A lot of money is riding on just when the Fed will start tapering.

This year? If then, soon or by the holidays? Next year? Market strategists now are embarked on a frenzy of speculation, akin to World Series forecasts, only with a bigger effect on the nation and the world.

Since the pandemic struck in early 2020, the Fed has been buying oodles of bonds—$80 billion per month in Treasurys and $40 billion in agency mortgage-backed securities—in an effort to keep long-term rates down and stimulate economy-enhancing borrowing.

The Fed indicated Wednesday that weaning the economy off that stimulus, known as quantitative easing or QE, is in the wings. In his public appearance after the Fed policymaking committee’s two-day meeting, Chair Jerome Powell was vague about details. He said no decisions had been made about the pace or the structure of tapering its buying campaign. Much will hinge on the progress of restoring the labor market to its pre-pandemic state, he said.

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Wall Street smarties, though, are parsing every word in this week’s committee statement and in Powell’s news conference to get some idea on the timing. Some of these Kremlinogy prognostications:

This year, as opposed to next. Cliff Hodge, CIO at Cornerstone Wealth, pointed out that Powell downplayed the on-rush of the virus’ Delta variant. Indeed, Powell acknowledged that the new strain could delay progress, but he showed little concern that it could pose a significant economic threat.

The upshot, in Hodge’s view is that the tapering will start at some point this year. “No major mention of the Delta variant keeps the timeline toward tapering on track before year-end,” he wrote in a research report.

In September. Now we get more specific. The case for a policy change soon: The world is awash in liquidity as central banks all over are maintaining a low-rate policy, Rick Rieder, CIO of global fixed income at BlackRock, told CNBC. And that risks more inflation, he warned, with a huge outpouring of demand for US assets.

He only partly agreed with Powell that the current swelling in prices likely will be temporary and the result of supply bottlenecks. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) leapt 5.4% in June, on an annual basis, creating unease in certain quarters. Some inflation may turn out to be long-lasting, Rieder contended, in particular regarding wages, which he said have popped up 10% for hourly service workers since 2019.

The Fed probably will announce its pullback on QE at its September meeting, he said. (That’s the next one, slated for Sept. 21 through 22.) Just the same, he hedged his bet by adding there’s “an outside chance they could start in November.”

In December. Brian Rose, senior economist for the Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management, sees things differently. He concurred that the Fed will move, but the caution Powell continues to display in his wording convinces him that a year-end shift is the most probable.

“Going into the meeting, some economists were looking for the Fed to announce the method they will use to carry out the taper, but this did not happen,” Rose wrote in a note. “Powell also made it clear that no decisions had been made yet. All of this suggests a tapering announcement is not imminent.”

Still, he doesn’t expect that stance to persist into next year, given the need to return a healing economy to normal. “The Fed will be dropping stronger and stronger hints in the months ahead,” he claimed, “with December the most likely timing of the formal tapering announcement.”

One thing appears certain: Powell will give plenty of advanced notice on policy changes. He surely doesn’t want a repeat of the Taper Tantrum, which occurred in 2013 when the Fed’s then-chair, Ben Bernanke, announced that the QE of the day, meant to help recovery from the Great Recession, would be reduced. Investors responded by dumping bonds, and yields skyrocketed. A shocked Bernanke backed off that idea.

Powell himself took a lot of heat when he boosted short-term rates in 2018, a campaign he eventually reversed under pressure.