Commonfund Announces Hires for Development of New Markets

According to a press release, key areas of expansion include an initiative that will meet the needs of clients who are moving to outsourced investment management. Secondly, the organization announced additional hiring in support of its entry into new markets, specifically corporate and public pension plans and other institutional investors.  

In addition, Commonfund is arranging its client service and investment resources to align with investor demand within the hedge fund and private capital areas.  

Lyn Hutton remains Commonfund’s Chief Investment Officer and her role expands to include responsibility for the organization’s growing outsourcing initiative – the Custom Investment Office (CIO).  

CIO provides enhanced oversight and risk management for nonprofit institutions with a one-stop outsourcing solution that will eliminate the need for clients to hire additional in-house staff, the announcement said. CIO further extends investor resources and offers an open architecture with the flexibility of separate account management that can be designed exclusively for certain risk tolerances and return expectations.  

Commonfund announced the hiring of Douglas McNeely to lead its New Markets Alternative Sales Team, which is focused on the growing opportunities within corporate and public pension plans as well as other institutional investors. While McNeely will maintain management responsibility for the growth of the new markets initiative, he has also been promoted to Managing Director, Group Head of Client Sales and Service, where he assumes leadership and overall responsibility for Commonfund’s already well-established nonprofit business.  

In support of the push into new markets, Commonfund announces the following new hires: 

• Carlton A. Byrd, Managing Director. – He joins Commonfund from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Financial Stability where he developed and executed asset management programs to effectively dispose of the investments and obligations made in financial institutions under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).  
• Seyonne Kang, Managing Director. – She most recently was Executive Director, Institutional Sales at Morgan Stanley in San Francisco where she focused on clients that included large hedge, mutual and pension funds that invest globally across asset classes such as the Capital Group companies, Dodge & Cox, Farallon Capital Management, Partner Fund Management, and the Retirement System of Texas. 
• Karen A. Morehouse joins Commonfund as Director, Business Development Coordination, New Market Sales. – She was previously a Senior Associate at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, working with strategic institutional clients and consultants; and for the Institutional Sales/Public Fund and Taft-Hartley Team where she developed Strategic Partnerships within the Public Fund arena. 

Commonfund said it is set to deliver to an array of hedge fund of funds, individualized hedge fund accounts (customized to meet specific client objectives,) as well as private capital portfolios to prospective pension fund clients as well as existing nonprofit clients. Nicholas De Monico will continue to oversee all of Commonfund’s hedge funds. He has also been promoted to the new title of Deputy CIO, and in that capacity will assume day-to-day management responsibility for all of Commonfund’s marketable investment programs.