Gaurav Patankar, chief investment officer of the $1.1 billion Merced County (Calif.) Employees' Retirement Association, left the pension fund three months after coming aboard as its first CIO.
He resigned effective Oct. 20, said Kristen Santos, retirement administrator. In his resignation letter, Patankar, who was working remotely from the East Coast, said "it has become apparent to me that the demands of this job and coast-to-coast travel were taking a heavy toll on me and my family and we are unable to commit to a family move to the west coast at this time ... I fully realize that these duties cannot be effectively discharged while being 3,000 miles away." Patankar declined further comment on his plans.
Patankar joined the pension fund in July as its first CIO. He had been an advisory board member with the Stanford Research Initiative on Long-Term Investing led by Ashby Monk, and his most recent position was at Bloomberg, where he built out research for alternatives, and emerging markets managers and strategies.
Before then, he was an outsourced CIO for a multifamily office, a managing director and portfolio manager at Boston Co. Asset Management (now Newton Investment Management) and had senior investment positions at the Lockheed Martin Investment Management Co. and Millennium Management.
