Charles Van Vleet enjoyed a 25-year career in banking and asset management before leaving it all behind in 2005 for the world of corporate pension fund management. That was the year Robin Diamonte, CIO at United Technologies Corp., offered him a place on her investment team, hiring him away from his job as a credit analyst and portfolio manager at Credit Suisse. Investing pension assets is “the best role of all,” says Van Vleet, who worked in UTC’s Hartford, Connecticut, investment office until 2013, when Textron lured him to Providence, Rhode Island, to run his own show as assistant treasurer and CIO. Van Vleet set to work applying his investment ideas to the company’s now-$6 billion U.S. defined benefit portfolio. He also oversees a total of $3.7 billion in global defined contribution assets. Three years in, the 56-year-old Van Vleet has reduced passive allocations in favor of active management, driven by his preference for identifying the underlying components, or factors, of a given investment. “Active strategies have more readily identifiable factor-driven styles,” says Van Vleet, who continues “to help [Textron’s] board view the fund in factor space as opposed to capital space.” In addition to its 47.5 percent allocation to global equity and 30.5 percent in fixed income, the portfolio sports 8 percent in private equity, 2.5 percent in structured hedge funds used in a portable-alpha strategy and 6.5 percent in direct real estate. For the three years ended December 31, 2015, the fund earned a 9 percent annualized return, versus 6.8 percent for corporate funds with more than $1 billion in assets in the BNY-Mellon benchmark .
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The 2016 U.S. Money Masters Click below to view profiles.
| Small Endowment Clemson University large public pension Florida State Board of Administration large corporate pension Benefit Plans, Ford Motor Co. Foundation Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation |
| manager lifetime achievement Dimensional Fund Advisors Small Public Pension San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System Health System Mount Sinai Health System Large Endowment Case Western Reserve University |
| Small Corporate Pension Textron Investor Lifetime achievement Lehigh University Endowment Fund |
