(May 8, 2014) – Wake Forest University has spun off its endowment investment office into an outsourced-CIO (OCIO) operation, the school’s President Nathan Hatch confirmed to aiCIO.
Verger Capital Management will continue to invest the university’s $1 billion endowment, Hatch said, which includes assets from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the school-affiliated Reynolda House Museum of American Art.
It has also landed a private school as its first client, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The new firm is a jointly-owned venture between the endowment’s management team and the Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based university.
Jim Dunn will continue to serve as CIO and also take the title of Verger’s CEO. Dunn has led the endowment since 2009. Prior to that, he served as CIO and managing director of Wilshire Associates in Santa Monica, California.
The firm’s board includes some members affiliated with the university, and the operation has been approved by Wake Forest’s board of trustees.
OCIO clients would gain access to the risk-oriented investment strategy that has been in place at Wake Forest for several years.
“Because we’re benchmark agnostic and use a factor-based asset allocation model, we don’t have traditional asset class ‘buckets’ to fill,” Dunn, a leading proponent of risk-factor models, told aiCIO in 2013. “We are able to be creative and opportunistic in our investment choices. One example is that of a global real asset manager who reached out to us regarding a large, distressed agricultural co-investment in Australia. The deal does not fall neatly into any bucket. The transaction required a quick analysis and turnaround—something we are able to do given our experience in the sector and our focus on factor exposures as opposed to asset classes.”
Verger will continue to operate out of Wake Forest’s Winston-Salem campus.
Related Content: Protect, Perform, Provide: The Wake Forest University Endowment; The 2012 and 2013 Power 100: Jim Dunn