Bill Spitz, whose performance as Vanderbilt University’s chief investment officer has earned him national recognition and some of the biggest paychecks in 21st-century academe, is planning to leave the job he has held since 1985.
Spitz, 55, will remain at his post until a successor is chosen. He expects that process to take as much as six to eight months. He will remain on the faculty of Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management.
"I'm just going to decompress for a while and not do a lot of anything," Spitz said when asked about his plans in an interview this morning. After 32 years in investment management, he said, "it's time for a break." Spitz, whose investment-advice books Get Rich Slowly and Save Smart for a Secure Future sold well in the 1990s, said he has no definite plans to return to writing but may yet do so.
In the 21 years Spitz has managed VU's kitty, it has grown from $300 million to almost $3 billion. This year, the endowment contributed more than $120 million in income to the university's operating budget.
Although the endowment lost value amid the market downdraft of 2001-2002, it generated returns of 16.9 percent in 2004 and 17.8 percent in 2005, representing a total appreciation of some $750 million over those two years. Its average annual return of 7.5 percent from 1999 to 2004 was more than double the median return of college endowments as a whole during that period, according to data from the National Association of College and University Business Officers.
As of 2005, Spitz had 30 percent of the endowment invested in domestic and global stocks, 18 percent in foreign equities, 14 percent in private equity, 11 percent in fixed income, 18 percent in absolute return strategies meant to generate a consistent rate of return no matter which way markets go, and 10 percent in inflation hedges including real estate, timber, energy and Treasury-protected securities.
In 1998, the University of Chicago lured Spitz away, announcing that he would take over its endowment -- but Vanderbilt found a way to retain him, and within a week it emerged that he would stay in Nashville.
A couple of years after that episode, a performance-based pay package made Spitz the best-paid university employee in the U.S. for the 2000-2001 school year, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. He pulled down $3.2 million that year, including $1.9 million in deferred compensation that was to be paid in 2005. In 2004, the most recent year for which the university's IRS Form 990 with executive salary data is available, Spitz's salary and benefit contributions came to $1.27 million.
Spitz co-founded and sits on the board of the Memphis-based Diversified Trust Co., a wealth management firm that has an office in Nashville. He also serves on the investment committee of Nashville-based venture capital firm Council Ventures. In the non-profit sector, he is chairman of the Tennessee Performing Arts Foundation and chairs the finance committee of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.
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