Samuel E. Belk IV joined Cambridge Associates as director of diversifying investments.
The position is new.
Mr. Belk was managing director, absolute return and distressed strategies for Dartmouth College’s $3 billion endowment fund, Hanover, N.H., Heather Huff, Dartmouth’s director of investment operations, said the position hasn’t been filled.
In a telephone interview, David Shukis, Cambridge Associates’ director of investment management research, called Mr. Belk’s appointment, to lead coverage of money managers who “explicitly diversify” a client’s portfolio through strategies with low correlations with equities, part of a broader change under way at the investment consulting firm.
“What we’ve done is divide coverage of managers” not by investment type or investment vehicle structure, but by the role those managers will play in a client’s portfolio, Mr. Shukis said.
Along with Mr. Belk’s diversifying investments group, the company has set up two “growth” groups — public growth, for managers of long-only products as well as long-biased hedge funds, and private growth, including venture capital and buyouts. Those will join an inflation-sensitive group, looking at hard assets and other inflation-sensitive products; and a fifth group covering hedges against deflation, including investment-grade bonds, said Mr. Shukis.
The change will accommodate and facilitate growing interest in risk-based asset allocation strategies, he said.
Mr. Shukis said the new position of director of investment manager research, which he took on at the start of July, was introduced as part of that broader shift in manager coverage at Cambridge. Previously, he was director of hedge fund research and consulting at the firm.
