The financial meltdown hammered the University of California’s investment portfolio, but it could have been worse. The UC system’s endowment dropped 18% for the 12 months through June, but other endowments declined even more-Yale and Stanford each down 30%, Harvard off 27%. The UC pension fund was down 19%, compared with a drop of 23% for CalPERS and 25% for CalSTRS. So while UC’s total assets under management declined from $67 billion to $55 billion, the loss was about $6 billion less than if UC had tracked its peers. A key, according to Newport Beach hedge fund manager Chuck Martin (Mont Pelerin Capital), a member of UC’s investment advisory committee, was a decision last October not to “rebalance” the portfolio even though stock holdings had dropped below policy guidelines. (In February and March the UC Regents finally did add stocks, another timely decision.) “No one likes to see negative numbers, but leadership from Treasurer Marie Berggren and her team, and guidance by the investment committee, paid off,” Martin says …
Two years ago pitcher Blake Hawksworth was a hot prospect in the St. Louis Cardinals farm system and seriously dating a young woman from Coto de Caza. His manager warned him: Don’t marry her unless she signs a prenup. Hawksworth replied that if anybody had to sign a prenup it was him. Hawksworth now is a budding star on the Cards’ major league roster. And on in November at the Mission San Juan Capistrano, he’ll marry the woman, Courtney Folino, daughter of Daranne and Emulex Executive Chairman Paul Folino …
Peter Ueberroth is back from working and entertaining on the family farm in north Idaho, looking tan and fit and sporting a goatee. His second assignment with the U.S. Olympic Committee is over (he overhauled the board structure and chaired the 2008 Beijing effort). He says his Contrarian Group is “seeking investment opportunities during these difficult financial times” …
Influential editorial writer Steven Greenhut is leaving the Orange County Register for the Pacific Research Institute think tank in Sacramento. But Greenhut expects to syndicate a libertarian-themed column that will run in the Reg …
Steve Duffy says his last venture, finding private equity for homebuilders, “was a perfect business plan for any recession except this one.” The longtime real estate adviser has a new gig that appears better suited to the times: RE managing director for Moss Adams Capital, an arm of Seattle-based accounting firm Moss Adams. He has set up a three-person “Kenneth Leventhal-like business” in Irvine to put together and restructure deals. Duffy previously was a top gun with Leventhal, Ernst & Young and Irvine-based Western National Properties …
Sandy Lassiter’s Dove Canyon-based Onsite Nurse Concierge is one of 20 semifinalists in Forbes.com’s “Boost Your Business” contest; the winner gets $100,000 …
Dynasty: George III, arriving at Hoag to George Jr. and Shannon Snyder Argyros.
