UJA Chief Leaving for New Catholic Foundation

Colin Ambrose

Colin Ambrose, chief investment officer of the UJA Federation of New York, is leaving his tenure behind when he becomes the initial CIO of a fledgling Catholic foundation.

Ambrose is to head the finances of the $3.2 billion Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, the UJA confirmed. The health fund only started up last May after Cardinal Timothy Dolan and other New York bishops revealed the plans. The new organization’s funds came from the $3.75 billion sale of faith-based health plan Fidelis Care to Centene.

Ambrose will now handle more than twice the investments than he did at the $1.4 billion UJA, but it’s not the first time the veteran has created an investment office. His first was at the Julliard School in 2005. He also started the UJA’s office. He joined the Jewish charity in 2009.

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The institution is looking to receive about $150 million in grants annually. According to Inside Philanthropy, Mother Cabrini is the second-largest legacy health foundation behind the California Endowment.

Mother Cabrini wants to set a “national model” for addressing the health and wellness needs of low-income communities, Al Kelly, Mother Cabrini’s board chair and Visa CEO, told the publication last May. The foundation does not yet have a website.

The foundation’s interim chief executive officer will be former New York Archdiocese Chancellor Gregory Mustaciuolo. Other board members include Morgan Stanley Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor Carla Harris; Catherine Kinney, former New York Stock Exchange president and co-chief operating officer; and Robert Unanue, president and CEO of Goya Foods.

The nonprofit organization takes its name from Francis Xavier Cabrini, a nun who advocated for children and immigrants in the late 1800s through early 1900s and became the first American canonized saint.

Ambrose will start with Mother Cabrini on Friday.

Tags: CIO, Colin Ambrose, Foundations, Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, UJA Federation of New York

A £30 billion UK pension pool will be collecting thought leadership pieces and research documents as it readies its manager search for a new fund it is starting.

The Brunel Pension Partnership Global Alpha Equities sub-fund search wants candidates to submit their cases for heading the best-performing global equities.

“What we’re doing here is just lining up managers,” said Mark Mansley, Brunel’s chief investment officer, who added that the firm is also looking “for the ability to generate long-term alpha.”

Once the search fully starts, Brunel will call on interested fund managers to submit a brief summary as to why they’re qualified for the job, which it calls “expressions of interest.” Brunel will use Inalytics and Redington as consultants.

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The sub-fund is planned to launch at year-end, aiming for a £2 billion portfolio, which Mansley hopes to be controlled by four to five managers. We’re “looking for diverse complementary approaches, but we don’t want them canceling each other out,” Mansley said. Brunel said it wants the fund to return at least 3% above benchmark, which will be mostly based on the MSCI World Index.

“The global high alpha is essentially intended to be a platform for those managers that have really high returns, [and] ambitious, concentrated portfolios,” Mansley said, adding that Brunel also wants evidence of performance and risk as well as a “variation of style and factor exposure.”

“We’re probably [also] looking for slightly different approaches to analyzing data,” the CIO said.

Interested managers can pre-register by sending their organizational details, research, and thought pieces to investments.brunel@brunelpp.org. The email should contain “Brunel Global High Alpha” in the subject line.

The pre-search will end in a few weeks, and the search’s deadline is contingent on the volume of submissions. Pre-search submissions will not gain advantages over standard search submissions.

Brunel conducted a similar procedure for its Emerging Markets Equities sub-fund, which began its official manager search this month.

The firm is also planning to create a core global sub-fund, which Mansley says is “much more focused on risk control.” It will likely be more diversified than the High Alpha fund.

Brunel runs the pension assets for 10 local government retirement plans (Avon, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Environment Agency, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire).

Tags: Brunel Pension Partnership, Global Alpha Equities, Inalytics, Local Government Pension Scheme, Mark Mansley, Redington, UK