Home > News > Manager Selection > Shundrawn Thomas to Leave Northern Trust Asset Management
Manager Selection

Shundrawn Thomas to Leave Northern Trust Asset Management

The asset manager’s president since 2017, he will co-found an investing firm to help female and minority business operators.
By Larry Light

Shundrawn Thomas is departing his post as president of Northern Trust Asset Management to co-found an investment firm with a premium on diversity. Thomas became NTAM’s president in 2017, after serving in several capacities. He will leave the company on June 1.

At the new firm, described as a diverse-owned business that will help privately held U.S. companies gain debt and equity capital, a big emphasis will be on female and minority business operators.

“Shundrawn has been a tireless champion for diversity, equity, and inclusion—both at Northern Trust and in the asset management industry—and is a recognized leader in sustainable investing,” said Northern Trust’s chairman and CEO, Michael O’Grady, in a statement. “We support Shundrawn’s commitment to driving social impact, and we wish him nothing but continued success.”

In the earliest stage of the pandemic, Thomas wrote an open letter to business and civic leaders calling for more compassionate leadership. In particular, he stressed the unequal toll exacted on marginalized communities and the responsibility of leaders to respond in word and deed.

Want the latest institutional investment industry
news and insights? Sign up for CIO newsletters.

He has an MBA from the University of Chicago, and worked for Morgan Stanley as a fixed-income analyst and then for Goldman Sachs as a vice president in the equities division, according to his LinkedIn profile. He joined NTAM in 2004 as vice president for alternative solutions, and then became head of corporate strategy.

Chairman O’Grady added: “Shundrawn led with clarity, empathy, and purpose and served as an example to us all. He not only embodied our enduring principles of service, expertise, and integrity; he also courageously challenged and guided us to evolve how we live our principles in more inclusive and equitable ways.”

As of March 30, Northern Trust had assets under custody or administration of $15.5 trillion, and assets under management of $1.5 trillion.

Related Stories:

Keeping Diversity Discussions from Becoming the Third Rail with Shundrawn Thomas

Q&A: Shundrawn Thomas Discusses His Push for Diversity, Empathy

Diversity Demands from NYC Pension Overseer OK’d at DuPont, Union Pacific

Tags: , , , , , ,

Home > News > Asset Allocation > COVID-19 Forced Sovereign Wealth Funds to Prioritize Sustainability
Asset Allocation

COVID-19 Forced Sovereign Wealth Funds to Prioritize Sustainability

The funds are now more focused on ESG, health care, tech, and venture capital than ever before.
By Anna Gordon



Sovereign wealth funds are among the newest and most heterogenous class of institutional investors. The term was only coined in 2005, to characterize several already existing organizations that invested on behalf of governments.

Yet, because these organizations are accountable to the local populations they serve, they were quickly used as rainy-day funds during the early days of the pandemic. Three Latin American funds were completely exhausted, while others in different parts of the world were reformulated or merged. This dramatic shock to the sovereign wealth fund industry led to a change in how these organizations function, according to an academic paper by Diego López that was published this February.  

“One can argue that 2020 has indeed marked the beginning of ‘SWF 3.0’, a period for a more mature industry that is focused on specific matters such as sustainability, resilience, and cooperation,” writes López.

The paper refers to SWF 3.0 as the post-pandemic era, SWF 2.0 as the era between 2005 and 2020, and SWF 1.0 as the early era of sovereign wealth funds before a name was coined.

For more stories like this, sign up for the CIO Alert newsletter.

“COVID-19 ended the opulence and excesses of SWFs and accelerated some of the trends occurring in the industry,” states the paper. These trends include “less and different real estate, more healthcare and technology, more partnerships, more ESG, and, especially, more venture capital.”

For example, sovereign wealth funds are now involved in startup investments all over the world.

“Funds are now able to enter earlier and smaller financing rounds, including seed and Series A, which was unthinkable a few years ago,” López writes.

The pandemic also pushed the funds to focus more on domestic investments, as SWFs were often relied upon to help with bailouts. Funds have also moved away from traditional real estate investing.

“Investments in brick and mortar, once favored by SWFs because of their alignment in risk and horizon, have decreased in volume from 34% of the total in 2012 to 18% in 2021,” states the paper.

Over the last decade, the amount of assets owned by sovereign wealth funds has increased dramatically. In 2008, global SWFs owned just $3.5 billion in total assets. In 2021, that number was $10.5 billion.

For the funds that survived the pandemic, long-term resilience has taken on greater importance. Now that the “rainy day” is passing, investors are starting to think further into the future. This has meant an increasing interest in long-term investing strategies. But sovereign wealth funds still trail behind many other institutional investors when it comes to ESG.  

“Only 12 funds are signatory members of the UN Principles for Responsible Investing and only German quasi-SWF KENFO and NZ [New Zealand] Super Fund have committed to the objective of Net Zero by 2050,” states the paper.

Related Stories:

 Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Loses $71 Billion in Q1

Grim Outlook for Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund after Poor Returns

Support Grows for US Creating a Sovereign Wealth Fund

Tags: , , , ,

«