Alaska Permanent Drives to Rebuild Leadership Team
Tim Walsh, Investment Advisor, Alaska PermanentThe end may be in sight for Alaska’s sovereign wealth fund overhaul after months of heavy recruiting, including concurrent CIO and CEO searches.
Trustees interviews with the final candidates to replace Jay Willoughby as CIO were scheduled to begin yesterday morning in Juneau, the state capital. Willoughby stepped down in October to lead outsourced-CIO firm The Investment Fund for Foundations.
Former Alaska Permanent Fund CEO Mike Burns retired four months earlier, without a named successor. For a few days, the $52 billion organization had no permanent executive leadership in place.
Since then, trustees made several staffing appointments, including former state treasury supervisor Angela Rodell as CEO.
The latest hire came late last month, fund documents showed, when former New Jersey pension system director Tim Walsh signed on as a part-time investment advisor with a two-year contract.
“The advisors”—Walsh is one of three— “impart special perspectives drawn from their professional knowledge in the areas of portfolio management, overall management of a large fund, and experience with an endowment or trust fund,” according to February’s meeting documents.
Walsh left New Jersey’s now-$72 billion pension fund in 2013 for an executive role at Hong Kong real estate firm Gaw Capital’s US subsidiary.
Now, Alaska Permanent has one more top-level transition to go: Appointing a CIO.
Board documents quoted trustees urging staff to “focus on the CIO search process” as far back as three months ago. The fund hired executive search firm DHR International to run initial recruitment and screening.
Juneau residents curious for a first look at the state’s future investor-in-chief—and the runners-up—were free to attend the interviews slated for yesterday.
Luring candidates up to the Northern sovereign wealth vehicle hasn’t traditionally been a problem, fund CEO Rodell told the Juneau Empire days after her appointment and Willoughby’s exit. They turn up—but then they turnover.
“We may just have to be a stepping stone,” Rodell said, “and people are going to leave here because we have restrictions—compensation probably being the biggest one. If we can attract bright, talented people … and then they want to leave and make millions of dollars, then we need to be OK with that.”