University of Utah endowment soon might initiate an invitation-only search for a traditional long-only equities manager to run up to $50 million and an alternatives manager to run up to $45 million as part of a major asset allocation shift, said CIO Jonathan Shear. No timetable has been set for the search.
The $425 million endowment, based in Salt Lake City, wants to go with a more global strategy and reduce exposure to long/short investments, Mr. Shear said. Last month it terminated Commonfund, which ran a $200 million equity portfolio consisting of roughly 25% international and 75% domestic, and a $45 million hedge fund-of-funds portfolio. Commonfund will continue to manage the hedge fund mandate until this spring.
Commonfund's termination was not performance-related; it continues to run roughly $17 million in private equity.
As part of its global focus, the endowment last month hired State Street Global Advisors to run about $140 million in an index fund benchmarked to the MSCI All Country World index, funded in part by the Commonfund equity assets. Approximately $50 million of the SSgA portfolio could eventually go to a long-only active manager, Mr. Shear said.
The remaining $60 million was added to Barclays Global Investors' existing $40 million account, and BGI's mandate was switched to active global equities from active international.
Consultant LCG Associates is assisting.
