HMC Hires VP From Stanford

The Harvard Management Company (HMC) has hired a new vice-president of external management from the ranks of Stanford University’s endowment management team.

Mark A. Taborsky will be responsible for managing HMC’s relationships with external money managers.

At Stanford, he was managing director of absolute return and fixed income for the University’s $12.2 billion endowment. He was also involved in asset allocation and risk management.

HMC President Mohamed A. El-Erian, who worked for a California-based bond manager before moving to Harvard earlier this year, said Taborsky would be a valuable addition to the company.

“Mark’s breadth of investment experience across a spectrum of asset classes, his analytical strengths, and his knowledge of the external management landscape will serve to further strengthen our Company’s ability to generate over time superior returns for the endowment and related funds,” he said in a statement.

With Taborsky’s appointment, HMC has now filled four of its five targeted senior management positions as it looks to rebuild after the departure of former HMC President Jack R. Meyer in 2005. When Meyer left, he took over thirty HMC employees with him to form Convexity Capital Management.

The only senior management position that has yet to be filled is in international fixed income.

El-Erian said he expects to make that hire within the next three months.

As with the other senior hires, Taborsky will be expected to build a team of his own by bringing on board qualified individuals, El-Erian said.

While Stanford’s $12 billion endowment is slightly less than half the size of Harvard’s $25.9 billion purse, it grew at a faster rate during the 2004-05 fiscal year than Harvard’s endowment—23% compared with 15%—according to a report by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

Excluding endowment growth due to gifts and other non-performance related factors, however, both endowments posted similar returns—19.5% for Stanford and 19.2% for Harvard—according to data from the Harvard and Stanford news offices.

Before joining the Stanford Management Company, Taborsky was a global derivatives trader at John W. Henry & Company, cofounder of Gargoyle Fund Management, and a fixed income portfolio manager for the Abacus Financial Group.

Taborsky holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s degree with first-class honors from McGill University in Canada.

—Staff writer Cyrus M. Mossavar-Rahmani can be reached at crahmani@fas.harvard.edu.