W. Gordon Binns Jr., former vice president and chief investment officer at General Motors Corp. and later chairman of the Virginia Retirement System’s investment advisory committee, died April 7. He was 72.
Mr. Binns spent 40 years with GM, heading its pension fund from 1981 until he retired in 1994. He is credited with diversifying the automaker’s pension fund into international equities, venture capital, real estate and other investments, and making other moves to help grow the fund from $10 billion to $12 billion when he started to around $53 billion when he left. After leaving GM, Mr. Binns worked with the VRS to expand the system’s holdings in equities. He left the Virginia fund in 1998.
