Northwestern administrators have begun searching for a new chief investment officer to replace David Wagner, who announced he will leave the post after nine and a half years at NU.
Wagner is leaving NU after being part of a massive modernizing campaign in the Office of Investment that saw the university’s investment options increase from only two to more than 20.
The university has moved from strictly stocks and bonds to alternative strategies such as venture capital, real estate and hedge funds. Wagner also has seen NU’s portfolio grow from about $1 billion to $3.6 billion.
Wagner, 58, now has plans to start his own financial consulting business focusing on hedge funds — investment partnerships that have active portfolio management and pay partners a percentage of the profits.
Wagner said he would stay on until a smooth transition could take place, probably sometime before summer. NU administrators said they will conduct the search for his replacement in a timely manner.
University President Henry Bienen, Vice President for Business and Finance Eugene Sunshine and members of the Board of Trustees, who compose the search committee, met Thursday morning at the Allen Center to begin sorting through candidates.
“I really hope we can move quickly within the next weeks,” Bienen said. “We’re going down the line in the process of talking to candidates. Wagner wants to leave and move on, so we need to get this done.”
Saying the search is in its beginning stages, Sunshine said he hopes to have a new chief investment officer in place within two or three months.
“We will move with as much alacrity as we can,” Sunshine said. “We are very grateful that (Wagner) has offered to stay on until a new person is in place. It is important to maintain the continuity of the office and for him to hand the baton to a new person.”
Sunshine also said he was pleased with the number of applicants for the position.
“We will select somebody who has the experience, talents and temperament to be very successful in leading the investment office,” he said. “It is the kind of job we think we can attract someone of quality to.”
The search for a new leader comes at a particularly difficult time for the investment office, as the university’s portfolio has taken a hit from the nation’s economic conditions and stock market.
Wagner said NU’s portfolio has fallen about $400 million from its peak of $4 billion but has rebounded from a post-Sept. 11 slump to the point where it’s now slightly higher than before the terrorist attacks.
Wagner said he felt fortunate to have taken over during the economic boom of the 1990s with NU administrators and trustees supporting his diversification of NU’s portfolio to the point where about 40 percent is invested in strategies other than stocks and bonds.
He also said he wasn’t worried about starting up his own business under current economic conditions.
“The kinds of strategies I’m going to work with do well when other investments aren’t doing well,” he said. “They’re not correlated with markets, so it actually could be a good time to start.
“We’ve always said (in the investment office) that we don’t market for time, and I’m sort of proving it at this point.”
The Daily’s Dan Murtaugh contributed to this article.
