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November 20, 2009
UTIMCO expected to approve $3.4 million in bonuses
The compensation committee of the University of Texas Investment Management Co. approved $3.4 million in bonuses for company employees this morning, and the full board was expected to make it official later today.
The committee approved the bonuses despite a decline in the value of higher education endowments overseen by UTIMCO. The bonuses are warranted because the employees’ investment acumen kept losses from being as great as those of market benchmarks for the year ending June 30, said Erle Nye, the company’s chairman.
UTIMCO officials were sharply criticized in February for last year’s bonuses, which also totaled $3.4 million at a time when the markets were falling. The criticism was leveled by Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and members of the state Senate Finance Committee.
Robert Rowling, who was chairman of UTIMCO at that time and also a UT System regent, abruptly resigned both posts during a Finance Committee grilling.
Nye and other officials of UTIMCO noted then that those bonuses covered a period when investment performance was quite good.
J. Philip Ferguson, vice chairman of UTIMCO, said today that six senior staff members, including CEO Bruce Zimmerman, had agreed to defer the latest proposed bonus payments. Zimmerman’s bonus would total $576,234.
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September 18, 2009
UT endowment fund falls 15 percent
The endowment funds overseen by the University of Texas System Board of Regents lost $2 billion, about 15 percent of their value, in the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, according to preliminary reports.
The endowments, managed by the University of Texas Investment Management Co., fell to $15.2 billion from $17.8 billion a year ago, Bloomberg News reported.
UTIMCO’s investments include $9.7 billion in the Permanent University Fund, of which two-thirds benefits the UT System and the rest benefits the Texas A&M University System.
UTIMCO is a private entity that answers to the UT regents and is subject to the state’s open meetings laws.
In July it had an estimated $23 billion under management, including the Permanent University Fund, the oil- and gas-based fund established to help finance 24 components of the UT and A&M systems - 18 academic and health institutions and six agencies.
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April 15, 2008
UTIMCO trims Sudan-related holdings
The University of Texas Investment Management Co. has trimmed its holdings in companies that do business in Sudan — even though its CEO said the company would not adjust its portfolio based on social and political considerations.
My colleague, Robert Elder, has the details on his Public Capital blog.
Militias allied with the Sudanese government are accused of atrocities against civilians in the Darfur region. Activists, including the White Rose Society, a UT student group, have been urging UTIMCO and its overseers, the UT System Board of Regents, to jettison Sudan-related holdings for some time. And last month, UT’s student newspaper, The Daily Texan, reported that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a speech on campus that UTIMCO should divest from Sudan.
Bruce Zimmerman, UTIMCO’s CEO and chief investment officer, explains in Elder’s report how the partial divestment came about. UTIMCO still holds about $12.5 million in Sudan-related investments among the $24 billion in higher education assets it manages.
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