Some big names in institutional investing have joined forces to provide Catholic-affiliated pension funds, endowments and other non-profit organizations with money management that follows the tenets of their faith.
Catholic Investment Services Inc. was created by Scott Malpass, vice president and chief investment officer at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Ind.; John J. Brennan, chairman emeritus and senior adviser at Vanguard Group Inc.; Charles I. Clough Jr.; chairman and CEO of Clough Capital Partners; Thomas E. Lanctot, partner at William Blair & Co.; and Peter C. Jeton, former chief operating officer for Apax Partners' U.S. operations. Mr. Jeton serves as CEO of Catholic Investment Services, which is based in Cambridge, Mass.
CIS, which launched in late 2013 and has about $100 million in assets under management, uses what Mr. Jeton called an “endowment-style approach” with “a broad range of investments” through manager of managers TIFF Advisory Services Inc., a subsidiary of the Investment Fund for Foundations. All investments are screened based on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' socially responsible investment guidelines, including protecting human life, arms reduction, economic justice and principles of good governance.
“We should get particularly attractive returns through access to managers that these organizations couldn't access otherwise” because they don't have the scale to do so, Mr. Jeton said.
