Sternberg’s college try

Oxford University alumnus Karl Sternberg is about to embark on a unique experiment in endowment management for his alma mater.

Oxford University alumnus Karl Sternberg is about to embark on a unique experiment in endowment management for his alma mater. The former Deutsche Asset Management executive is forming Oxford Investment Management, aiming to streamline investments for the university’s many separate college endowments while also providing fund management services for unaffiliated foundations and wealthy families. The new firm so far has commitments of funds from two of Oxford’s 39 colleges: Christ Church and St. Catherine’s. Sternberg, a 37-year-old Christ Church graduate who helped manage St. Catherine’s endowment when he was CIO of DeAM’s non-U.S. business, will team up with Paul Berriman, formerly DeAM’s U.K. chief, to get the operation rolling.

“We’re really building a hybrid, semiphilanthropic organization,” says Sternberg, who at DeAM oversaw 600 investment professionals across Europe, Asia and the U.K. “It’s neither a purely commercial nor a charitable venture but will combine the best qualities of both.”

Sternberg believes that by pooling their assets, Oxford’s various colleges can reduce costs and benefit from the advantages of scale. Each of the colleges now invests its endowment separately.

OIM will launch with about £100 million ($177 million) in allocations from the founding schools’ endowments. The fund will seek to deliver equitylike returns with less volatility than the public markets, much like a well-diversified absolute-return portfolio. With that in mind, Sternberg is looking to invest with some of the Oxford grads who have become star money managers in the City.

“Since most hedge fund managers in the U.K. have been to either the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge,” he says, “we’re hoping that they’ll at least consider giving us access to some otherwise capacity-constrained funds for a good cause.”

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