Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Seeks New CIO

The $12.7 billion foundation is looking to replace Brian O’Neil, who is retiring at the end of the year.



The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is seeking a new CIO to succeed Brian O’Neil and oversee its $12.7 billion investment portfolio. A foundation spokesperson said O’Neil will be retiring at the end of the year. The philosophy of the Princeton, N.J.-based foundation is to fund initiatives to “address some of America’s most pressing health challenges.”

In a job posting on its website, the foundation said that the CIO position oversees all aspects of management of the endowment portfolio and the foundation’s investment team. It said the CIO will be responsible for the overall investment policy, asset allocation, manager selection, and portfolio risk, as well as the relationship with the board of trustees’ investment committee.

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The CIO is expected to “build close working relationships with colleagues, particularly in the law and finance departments, to uphold the foundation’s guiding principles,” the foundation said in the post.

The key responsibilities include recommending and evaluating the asset allocation framework as well as investment policies, and developing and maintaining the risk management framework, including measurement and reporting on portfolio return and risk. The role also includes implementing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) approaches to the endowment, as well as equity, diversity, and inclusion implementation.

Other responsibilities include:

  • Hiring, developing, managing, and leading the work of the investment team “to build a diverse, multicultural team.”
  • Creating an open, collaborative, positive, and highly ethical environment for investment decision-making.
  • Creating a climate of responsibility and accountability so that members of the team are willing to take ownership of decisions and results.
  • Working closely with the foundation’s investment committee chair, general counsel, and CEO.
  • Delivering quarterly reports to the board of trustees.

The foundation said its ideal candidate will have extensive experience in investment management, strategy, asset classes, manager selection, and investment relationships.

“The candidate must have extensive risk and markets expertise,” said the posting. “Preference is for experience in managing a diversity of asset classes as well as all aspects of the investment processes for an endowment, foundation, or comparable institutional investment structure.”

The starting base salary range for the position is $725,000 to $750,000 a year, plus a potential bonus pay program based on investment performance.

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When Will the Fed Be Done With Its Rate Increases?

The futures market thinks a 4.0% benchmark level might be the central bank’s peak.

A large chunk of investors was shocked to hear Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s hard line last week on pumping up interest rates to fight inflation. Now the big questions animating Wall Street are: How high will the Fed go, and when will it be done tightening?

Right now, Fed’s target rate band sits at 2.25% to 2.50%. The betting in the futures market is that by next July, it will be 3.75% to 4.0%, its likely top. (The July 2023 contract is the last available on this subject.)

If the Fed delivers another 0.75 percentage point raise in its September meeting, as the futures market overwhelmingly expects, then that brings us to 3.0% to 3.25%. By current reasoning, this means there’s only 0.75 point more to go.

Nobody knows, of course, whether a federal funds rate around 4% will do the job and squelch the inflationary surge that began last year. And while the Fed has indicated 2% remains its desired inflation target, it hasn’t stipulated its peak rate, saying that what it does depends on the data.  

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“The magnitude and pace of Fed rate hikes over the next few months is less important than the overall level at which the Fed pauses its rate hiking cycle,” observed David Bahnsen, CIO of the Bahnsen Group investment firm, in a research note. He said he anticipates the Fed to stop at a 3.5% target rate.

Meanwhile, good economic news is “toxic” to the market and leads to selloffs, in the words of Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist for LPL Financial. In a research report, Krosby pointed out that Tuesday’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey announcement—of an above-consensus 11.2 million openings in July—is a result that feeds the narrative of continued wage expansion, thus fueling further inflation.

The good news: According to market sage Mark Hulbert, writing in MarketWatch, stocks rally once the Fed is finished, and often begin their advance before the rate-boosting cycle is completed. (They always fall when rates are increasing.)

In the last rate-increasing campaign ending December 2018, the S&P 500 was flat from its low point to the Fed cycle’s conclusion. Prior to that, for the Fed cycle that ceased in June 2006, the index rose 4%. For all five previous rate-raising cycles before the current one, the average S&P 500 rise from the market low to the cycle’s end was 7.1%.

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