Stanford Management Company appoints Ken Frier chief investment officer

Kenneth Frier, chief investment officer of the Hewlett-Packard Company, has been appointed chief investment officer of the Stanford Management Company (SMC).

As CIO of HP since 2007, Frier's global responsibilities include the investment of more than $30 billion of retirement plan assets for HP and its foreign subsidiaries. At HP since 2000, Frier previously was responsible for corporate finance and foreign exchange. Frier has an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was named an Arjay Miller Scholar.

"Today's demanding markets require creative thinking, strong risk management, and close coordination across investment disciplines. Ken brings great strengths in all these areas, and I am excited to partner with him in the leadership of Stanford Management Company," said John Powers, president and chief executive officer of SMC.

Frier will oversee investment strategy at SMC, a division of Stanford responsible for managing the university's financial and real estate assets. He will be responsible for the university's merged pool of investment assets, which was $14.5 billion as of June 30, 2009, including its endowment.

Frier will assume his new position in September.

"I'm thrilled to be returning to Stanford and eager to make a contribution to the success of the endowment and the mission of the university," he said.

The comprehensive CIO search was led by David Barrett Partners of New York and London.

Under Frier's leadership, HP was one of the first companies to fully immunize its U.S.-defined benefit plan, moving entirely out of public equities near the stock market peak in 2007 and into fixed-income assets with an interest rate swaps overlay.

As vice president of corporate treasury at HP from 2000 to 2008, Frier helped raise more than $14 billion of funding in the term debt market, managed more than $30 billion in share repurchase spending (including three large structured transactions) and executed more than $100 billion per year of derivatives transactions.

Prior to joining HP, Frier was chief financial officer of firstsource.com, a business-to-business e-commerce company, from 1999 to 2000. He also spent nine years in the treasury group of the Walt Disney Company, where he was in charge of financial risk management and the investment of $3 billion in pension fund assets. Before Disney, Frier spent two years as international treasurer of Oracle Corporation and four years as a financial consultant with Arthur Young & Company.

Frier received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science with honors from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and his Stanford MBA in 1984. He is a member of the CFA Society of San Francisco and serves on the board of directors of the Global Commercial Microfinance Consortium.

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