Building a successful global venture capital portfolio is no easy task. As CIO of the University of Michigan endowment, Erik Lundberg has found a winning formula that includes investing in Michigan’s hometown of Ann Arbor. Lundberg, 55, who has long favoredalternative investments，监督哪个复杂的投资组合，其中风险投资，私募股权，对冲基金，自然资源和房地产占该基金的60％。
The discovery of oil in Lundberg’s native Norway in the late 1960s created great wealth that enabled him and others of his generation to attend college in the U.S., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin and an MBA in international business and finance from Ohio State University. Having settled in the Midwest, he started his career in corporate finance at telecommunications company Wisconsin Bell before becoming an international equity analyst in the pension department at the Chicago headquarters of parent Ameritech Corp. When Michigan’s regents recruited him to start an investment office in 1999, he was an investment strategist leading Ameritech’s asset allocation and managing its U.S. and international equity program.
Lundberg帮助密歇根州捐赠基金占2014年6月30日止十年的年度10％的返回。现在，在2014年Nacubo-Commonfund研究的捐赠中，该基金在第九位接近了100亿美元的资产。当他到达时，它管理了25亿美元，并排名第17。高级作家弗朗西斯丹麦最近赶上了十大Cio，以获得他对新兴市场，风险投资和建设投资队的最新思想。
密歇根州的新兴市场股票股票产品组合是什么样的，现在有什么吸引力？
We have investments in emerging-markets equity in pretty much all asset classes. We also think of venture and private equity as equity. About half of private equity is not U.S. Even in venture capital, about a third is outside the U.S. We try to globalize wherever we can. You can go to places and be bold, like to Brazil or Russia or other emerging markets that seem very troubled but may be very good investments over time. How do you buy some of these countries that look terrible? If you go back five or six years, India looked like a terrible place to invest, but people who invested there got hugely rewarded over that period.
需要很多时间，其中一些地方真的很远。我们尝试做的一件事就是了解非洲。我认为非洲有很大的承诺。这是一个很好的未知。它在地图上看起来有点小，因为其他一切都被比例缩放，但它非常大。投资公司遍布各地，我们无法弄清楚。多年来，我们想到了去非洲，但是因为它太遥远了，我们并没有关注。随着时间的推移，我们了解到要注意的最佳方式是进行投资。你不能只是读到它;你有一些钱，你真的专注。
所以我们发现了一种方法，通过一项资金基金，该资金将要投资我们，而且是我们的眼睛和耳朵。这很好地工作得很好，我们已经变得更聪明。所以我们不能自己的地方，我们尝试更多地与我们的管理人员一起工作。
Michigan has been very successful in its venture capital investments, which are now 13 percent of the total portfolio. What’s your secret?
我们在20世纪90年代开始很早，并且幸运的是，在投资咨询委员会的成员中获得巨大的帮助，以便在风险投资更像是山寨行业时获得最佳资金。现实只是一把经理实际上在风险投资中创造了大部分价值。如果你不在最终四分位数的基金中，你就没有钱;这是戏剧性的。它对股票或债券经理成为顶级四分位数并不是那么重要，因为他们仍然会得到某种回报。
I’m not advocating going out and putting a lot of money into venture capital, but it’s a great place for value to be created. One of the reasons our allocation is so large is that it has grown as companies stay private longer. They do well, but they stay private, and they grow fairly rapidly. Companies that used to go public at $100 million or $200 million ten to 15 years ago are now waiting until they’re valued at $40 billion or maybe even $100 billion — who knows? Those returns used to accrue to public markets investors and now accrue to those who invest in venture capital.
你在哪里找到风险投资投资？
Start-ups are really spread out. They can be anywhere. New York is a hot place for venture investing, and even Michigan. We went to China about ten years ago. About a third of our venture portfolio is in China now; that took a little courage to get comfortable with. We went over there and met with a lot of people and found people we trusted. We also worked with our managers to figure out others. We took the view that this isn’t all going to work out, but it’s going to be good enough that we’re going to be very happy. And that’s how it turned out. You’ve got to be early because these strategies can be cash-constrained. By the time you realize who the good managers are, they’re not going to be able to take on new investors.
Michigan’s public universities have a reputation for robust technology transfer programs. Have you taken advantage of them in the investment office?
我们在大学拥有很好的创新;工程，医疗 - 这里创建了各种伟大的想法。很多人都希望我们投资这些举措，而是作为一种禀赋，我们不能只是为了支持当地公司。这不是我们使用捐赠的东西。它投资回报。
几年前我们很幸运来交流ross a database that tracked everything that had come out of the university in terms of new technologies that were commercialized. It turns out it’s actually a very good record. We looked at the data and found a way that would yield more than acceptable returns — venture returns of around 3.5 times. So we developed a program to invest in UM-based start-ups out of the endowment, with some big caveats: We’re not technology experts, so we don’t know how to value new technologies, and we don’t know which technology is going to succeed. We need a credible venture capital firm to come in and invest in these companies, and then we invest as a limited partner alongside the VC firm. Two and a half years into the program, we’ve made about 11 investments.
How do you attract and retain talent, and how do you structure your team?
这一直是一项挑战。我认为每个人都应该是一般主义者。这可能是我自己的偏见，因为我是一般主义者。但是当你运行资产类时，很难成为一般主义者，也很了解你需要知道的一切，你可以在资产类别中找到最好的一切。
所以我们试图做的是很早就创建了一般主义者。我们雇用人口级别，我们为每年在不同资产课程中工作的分析师进行了旋转计划。多年来，他们培养了他们可以建立的伟大知识基础。最终，他们将发现他们被吸引的哪个区域。我认为在他们喜欢的地区工作的人会做得更好。
Later they have that big foundation to draw from when we talk about other asset classes. I think we make better decisions as a team when everybody weighs in rather than making decisions in silos. It seems to be the natural tendency of how we are as people and how the industry is organized that we eventually end up in silos. So we try to build a broad base so we all have something we can relate to in other areas.
Visit Frances Denmark’sblog并在推特上跟随她@francesdenmark。