Harvard Endowment Chief Stephen Blyth Resigns

stephenvblyth Stephen Blyth, outgoing CEO, HMCHarvard Management Company’s (HMC) CEO Stephen Blyth has resigned for “personal reasons” effective immediately, the endowment announced.

Robert Ettl, HMC’s COO, will continue to serve as interim CEO.

“The board is deeply grateful for Stephen’s many contributions during his distinguished 10-year career at HMC, particularly in his most recent role as president and CEO where he created a more flexible asset allocation framework, a redesigned compensation system, and a collaborative investment decision structure,” said Paul Finnegan, HMC board’s chairman.

Blyth, who announced he was taking a medical leave in May, will serve as senior advisor to the endowment board. He will also return to teaching quantitative finance at Harvard.

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René Canezin, head of fixed income, credit, and commodities, and Rich Hall, head of private equity, will continue to co-chair the endowment’s investment committee. Head of Real Estate Daniel Cummings will serve as Ettl’s vice-chairman on HMC’s executive committee, Harvard added.

“HMC is fortunate to have a strong and deep leadership team,” Finnegan said. “We are confident that under Bob Ettl’s leadership, HMC will continue to successfully implement its investment strategy.”

Blyth was tapped as CEO in September 2014 replacing outgoing CEO Jane Mendillo. He joined HMC in 2006 and served as head of public markets until the promotion, overseeing roughly 40% of the fund’s assets.

The $37.6 billion endowment has hired executive recruiter David Barrett Partners to search for Blyth’s replacement.

State Street Bank has agreed to pay $530 million to settle allegations that it had charged clients hidden markups to foreign currency exchange trades.

According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), one of a number of investigating authorities, State Street gained “substantial revenues by misleading custody clients.”

The SEC alleged that while State Street told clients it would guarantee “the most competitive rates available” on FX trades, it instead fixed prices “driven by predetermined, uniform markups and made no effort to obtain the best possible prices for these clients.”

“State Street misled custody clients about how it priced their trades and tucked its hidden markups into a corner where they were unlikely to notice,” said Andrew Ceresney, director of the SEC’s division of enforcement.

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As part of the settlement, the Boston-based firm admitted it had “generally” failed to price FX transactions at market rates.

The financial agreement includes a $167.4 million fine to the SEC, $155 million to the Department of Justice, at least $60 million to settle cases with the Department of Labor, and $147.6 million to resolve private class-action lawsuits. State Street has also settled with the Massachusetts Attorney General.

The FX trades in question occurred between 1998 and 2009, State Street said, and since then the firm has improved operations.

“In 2009, we significantly strengthened our disclosures around indirect foreign exchange, including publishing the spread relative to indicative interbank market rates at the time of pricing, and today believe we provide our clients with the most comprehensive disclosures in the industry,” Mike Rogers, State Street’s president and COO, said in a statement.

The settlement comes just three months after former State Street executives Ross McLellan and Edward Pennings were indicted on scheming to defraud at least six institutional clients of its transition management business.

US authorities claimed the duo had overcharged “secret commissions” to billions of dollars of trades between February 2010 and September 2011.

The allegedly defrauded clients include the UK’s Royal Mail Pension Plan, Ireland’s National Pension Reserve Fund, and the Kuwait Investment Authority.