Mark Baumgartner Will Join Dalio Family Office as CIO

Mark Baumgartner

The Carnegie Corp. of New York announced that current CIO Mark Baumgartner will step down after nearly three years to join global macro investor Ray Dalio’s family office as CIO.

“We are grateful for Mark Baumgartner’s expertise, dedication, and stellar performance on behalf of Carnegie Corporation of New York, and while we are disappointed to lose him, we know that this move is an exceptional opportunity for Mark and the Dalio Family Office,” said Dame Louise Richardson, Carnegie Corp. president.

“I am filled with deep gratitude for the profound impact that Carnegie Corporation of New York has had on me—working for such a distinguished philanthropy has been an honor and a privilege,” Baumgartner said in the release. “As I step into a new role, I carry with me the values instilled by the Corporation: a dedication to making the world a better place through improving education, fostering democracy, and promoting peace. I remain deeply connected to this mission and forever grateful for the experiences, relationships, and lessons learned during my tenure.”

At Carnegie, Baumgartner’s investment team outperformed its peers, according to the release, and grew the fund’s endowment to $4.2 billion. At the family office of the Bridgewater Associates founder, he will support the Dalio family’s philanthropic ventures, such as OceanX, Dalio Education and the Endless Network. “We are thrilled to welcome Mark to our team because his life, investment and work principles are highly aligned with ours,” Ray Dalio said in a statement. “I have no doubt that he will effectively lead our global investments, which will be critical to achieving our family and philanthropic aspirations.”

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Baumgartner won a 2019 CIO Industry Innovation Award in the endowments category for his work as CIO at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Baumgartner was also previously a director in asset allocation and risk at the Ford Foundation. He has been a board member for the YMCA Retirement Fund and the Investment Fund for Foundations and Scientific Technologies. He also held positions at Boston Consulting Group, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, among others.

Baumgartner earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. from Princeton University in mechanical and aerospace engineering.

2019 IIAW – Mark Baumgartner

Tags: Carnegie Corporation of New York, Dalio Family Office, Mark Baumgartner, Ray Dalio

The University of Virginia Investment Management Co., which manages the university’s $13.6 billion endowment, reported a 2% return for the fiscal year that ended June 30, missing its benchmark’s 12.3% return by more than 1,000 basis points.

“Fiscal year 2023 was challenging for diversified institutional portfolios with significant allocations to private investments,” UVIMCO CEO and CIO Robert Durden wrote in the firm’s annual report, adding that its public equity and long/short equity portfolios underperformed broad markets.

The investment group candidly acknowledged that its developed market managers “were not able to fully capture the strong gains seen in domestic equities.” Durden also reported that private investments “significantly lagged public indices,” with the private equity portfolio declining by 5.3%, as compared with a sharp rise in global public equities.

According to VIMCO, its growth equity, venture capital and resources investments underperformed by “wide margins” the MSCI ACWI, which tracks mid- and large-cap stocks. The firm attributed the underperformance to routine lags in valuation adjustments, as well as the industry exposures of underlying investments. The manager also reported that while its diversifying strategies of fixed income and cash, absolute return and credit collectively outperformed the blended Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bond Index by 3.4%, it “failed to fully compensate for the one-year underperformance of the long -term pool’s equity investments.”

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Despite the lackluster results for the year, the endowment—the fifth-largest public university endowment in North America, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers—continues to outperform its benchmark over all other time periods. UVIMVCO reported three- and five-year annualized returns of 13.1% and 10.1%, respectively, compared with its benchmark’s returns of 8.0% and 7.0%, respectively, over the same periods.

Over 10- and 20-year periods, the endowment’s portfolio returned 9.8% and 10.0%, respectively, while its benchmark returned 7.4% and 7.5%, respectively.

“While short-term underperformance is challenging for us and our investors,” the VIMCO report explained, “bearing different market, manager, and liquidity risks than the policy benchmark helps us earn exemplary investment results over time.

The long-term investment pool has an asset allocation of 27.0% public equity, 26.3% private equity, 15.1% real assets, 11.4% long/short equity, 9.8% absolute return, 6.3% fixed income, 3.8% credit and 0.3% cash. The vast majority of the portfolio is held in pooled investments and commingled funds, as well as in fixed income and cash, rather than through direct ownership of individual securities.