GEM was founded in 2007 by the investment leadership of the Duke University Management Company and The Duke Endowment. Our mission was to replicate the investment management style and governance model of the leading endowments.
As a leading Outsourced Chief Investment Office (OCIO), we deliver a sophisticated, endowment-style investment program to institutions with a multigenerational horizon. We combine disciplined portfolio management with sound governance and a boutique mindset — integrating with our clients’ organizations as if we’re their in-house team.
As client needs have evolved and broadened, we’ve leveraged our multi-asset investing capabilities into tailored solutions for other types of long-term investors. GEM clients access our underwriting process, manager relationships, and integrated partnership via comprehensive OCIO engagements, targeted alternative investments programs, and impact-focused strategies.
We are employee-owned and independent, structurally aligned with our clients’ long-term objectives. No matter the mandate, we look to generate superior risk-adjusted returns over the long term by accessing high-quality investment opportunities, combined with an ethos of partnership built to endure.1
Pioneered by David Swensen and the Yale Investments Office in the mid-‘80s, endowment-style investing is rooted in the belief that perpetual investors have distinct opportunities and advantages relative to traditional investors. Instead of relying solely on conventional asset types in a standard portfolio structure, the leading endowments focus on broad diversification across asset classes, with allocations to alternatives such as private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, and real estate, where skill in differentiated manager selection can generate alpha in less efficient markets.
Our team has extensive experience at leading endowments, private equity firms, hedge funds, and asset managers across the country. GEM’s senior leaders, many of whom were trained as direct investors, operate with a principal mindset. We bring to bear the full weight of our team’s expertise on behalf of each client to ensure exceptional results and partnership.
In the second of his three-part series on the Endowment Model, Deputy CIO Matt Bank examines the incomplete quantitative arguments around endowment performance and offers a more substantive evaluation framework.
As many smaller endowments and foundations opt to outsource their investment management, the Financial Times spoke to GEM's Deputy CIO Matt Bank about how this arrangement can be beneficial to such institutions.
The first of Deputy CIO Matt Bank’s new series, The Long View, reaffirms GEM’s belief that the Endowment Model – in the right hands, for the right institutions – remains a compelling means of achieving risk-adjusted returns.
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1 Returns are not guaranteed.
