Chan Zuckerberg Institute Names Princeton’s David Lee CIO

David Lee

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a philanthropic organization launched by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Pricilla Chan, has named David Lee, managing director of the Princeton University Investment Co., as its first CIO.

The organization said Lee will work closely with its investment committee, which is chaired by David Swensen, CIO of the Yale University endowment.

“The mission of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is so important, and it’s an honor to be joining the team,” said Lee in a release. “I look forward to partnering with the investment committee and getting to work in support of the many ambitious projects underway across the organization.”

Lee will be responsible for managing an investment portfolio that will support the organization’s three core initiatives: science, education, and justice and opportunity.

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“David Lee’s passion for social impact and experience growing one of the most successful university endowment portfolios in the country will be a tremendous asset to CZI,” Chan said in a release.

Other members of the investment committee include Matt Cohler, general partner of Benchmark; Carter Simonds, former managing director of Blue Ridge Capital; and Lei Zhang, founder and CEO of Hillhouse Capital.

While at Princeton, where he worked for more than eight years, Lee worked on asset allocation and the marketable asset categories, including domestic equity, international equity, and independent return. Prior to joining Princeton, he was an analyst and an associate at ABN AMRO in London, where worked for two years.

Lee earned a degree in economics and econometrics from the University of York in the UK, holds an M.S. with Distinction specializing in Quantitative Finance from the University of Reading (UK), and received an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Tags: Chan Zuckerberg Institute, CIO, David Lee, Facebook

The aggregate funding position of the 5,450 corporate pension plans tracked by the UK’s Pension Protection Fund’s PPF 7800 Index rose to 100.9% in November from 95.9% at the end of October, with new actuarial assumptions boosting the pensions’ funding level beyond fully funded.

The PPF reported that the funds improved to an estimated surplus of £14.3 billion at the end of November from a deficit of £67.2 billion at the end of October. Total assets were £1.58 trillion, while total liabilities were £1.57 trillion. Total pension assets fell 0.5% during the month, but increased by 1.1% over the year, while total liabilities fell 5.4% for the month, and 5.2% from the same month last year.

The number of plans in deficit decreased to 3,008 at the end of November from 3,420 at the end of October, and now represent 55.2% of the total defined benefit plans tracked by PPF. Meanwhile, the number of plans in surplus increased to 2,442 at the end of November, representing 44.8% of plans, from 2,030 at the end of October (37.2%), and 1,925 plans in surplus at the end of November 2017 (34.4%).

The aggregate deficit of all plans in deficit fell to £137.6 billion at the end of November from £184.8 billion at the end of October, and from £197 billion at the end of November 2017. Meanwhile, the total surplus of plans in surplus rose to £151.9 billion at the end of November, from £117.6 billion at the end of October, and from £109.4 billion at the same time last year.

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The PPF also said it moved to a new dataset that is based on a more up-to-date universe of pension plans, which excludes plans that have entered PPF assessment, for example, and uses more recent funding information from the plans.

It said the change increased the funding level at the end of October by 2.3 percentage points and improved the aggregate funding position by £40.5 billion. And for the figures for the end of November, the new dataset accounts for a new version of the actuarial assumptions for s179 valuations, which increased the funding level by 5.1 percentage points.

Without the new actuarial assumptions, the funding level for November would have been 95.8%, a decrease of 0.1 percentage points over the month as an increase in gilt yields led to decreases in liability values. Equity markets and gilt yields are the main drivers of funding levels.