The value of Ohio State’s long-term investment pool, which includes endowments and investments of OSU’s operating funds, has climbed back to more than $1.8 billion, after a 23.3 percent drop in fiscal year 2009 left it at $1.66 billion.
OSU Chief Investment Officer Jonathan Hook, who took office in August 2008, explained his strategy for the university’s portfolio at the Board of Trustees’ Investment and Development Committee meeting Wednesday.
His strategy has included the addition of new investment managers and the removal of others. Since 2007, the Office of Investments has added 57 new managers and removed 34, with about 60 changes occurring in the last year.
Some of the turnover can be attributed to changing investment strategies, and some can be attributed to upgrading, Hook said.
“We continue with upgrading and realigning our portfolio to try to improve the lineup of managers that we have from managers with whom we are not as comfortable to those who we think will do better,” he said.
Trustee Jerry Jurgensen expressed concerns about the high employee turnover.
“The more active [managers] I see fired and managers hired, the more nervous I become,” he said.
Manager turnover is unlikely to continue at this rate, Hook said.
“For a portfolio of our size, you might average somewhere between 10 to 20 changes in a year; in two years, we’ve done about four times that,” he said. “We’re not going to see nearly the changes over the next 12 months that we have in the past 24.”
