NJ loses investment manager to Rutgers University

The New Jersey Division of Investment private markets senior portfolio manager Jason MacDonald is leaving the state’s pension plan to join Rutgers University as an investment director.

MacDonald joined the $72 billion NJ Division of Investment in July 2007 as an investment analyst and became the senior portfolio manager in April 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is a Rutgers alumnus, his LinkedIn said.

“Jason has been instrumental in building the alternative investment portfolio,” New Jersey Department of Treasury Joseph Perone wrote to sister publication Private Equity International in an email.

A Rutgers spokesman told PEI that MacDonald will start his new position on 20 July as Rutgers’ first investment director, reporting to the vice-president for finance and associate treasurer, and to the chairman of the joint committee on investments. MacDonald will help manage the university’s long-term endowment assets and be responsible for the day-to-day oversight of the endowment.

The spokesman added that Rutgers, which has a $1 billion endowment, had used Mercer as a general investment consultant, which it will remain. A report by Raymond James indicated the university allocates 10 percent of its assets to private equity investing as of 28 February 2015.

The New Jersey pension fund manages $71.3 billion as of 30 April, according to its website, and allocates about 9 percent of its assets to private equity, according to PEI Research & Analytics. Earlier this year, it sold its stake in a buyout fund that backs a payday lender, seven months after it said it was exploring options to exit the investment.