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March 17, 2006
Cambridge college hires fund manager
Trinity College, Cambridge, has recruited a leading hedge fund manager to run its £700m endowment in the latest effort by Oxbridge to bring top-level expertise to its investment strategies.
Rory Landman, a former fund manger at Thames River Capital, will be elected to the fellowship of Cambridge's wealthiest college today and will take up the position of senior bursar on September 1.
Although bursorial salaries rarely exceed £50,000, both Oxford and Cambridge have been recruiting heavily from the ranks of top City executives who are attracted by the more relaxed pace of academic life. Both universities are struggling with funding shortfalls and want to extract greater returns from their endowments.
While the trend away from appointing former military men or academics to run the college funds has been on going since the early 1990s, hedge fund managers of the calibre of Mr Landman are still relatively rare in the senior common rooms. Trinity said his background did not mean it would move strongly into hedge funds, which currently only occupy a small part of a portfolio that is heavily skewed towards commercial property.
Canny investment by former Trinity bursars means two-thirds of the endowment is held in property, including the Cambridge Science Park and a major interest in the Port of Felixstowe, the large container port. The college could benefit from Mr Landman's expertise in emerging markets, which has been a big driver of growth for large US endowments such as Harvard and Yale. Mr Landman has amassed a 15-year track record of investing in emerging markets.
Jeremy Fairbrother, the outgoing bursar, described the position as a "wonderful job" and said he expected Mr Landman would want to make a complete review of the college's portfolio.
-Financial Times-
Posted by su at March 17, 2006 9:02 AM