Iivo Paukkeri is stepping down from his role as Head of Investments at Aalto University’s endowment fund in Finland to join the family investment company of Finland’s wealthiest individual, Anttii Herlin, and his children. After more than 15 years at the endowment fund, Paukkeri will join the family office Security Trading Oy at the beginning of 2025.

“After 15 years at Aalto University, I’ll be moving on at the end of the year,” Paukkeri announced on LinkedIn. “It has been a unique opportunity to build the university’s endowment since its inception. Now the job is open for someone else to take it further,” he added. “On a related note, I’m looking forward to joining the team at Security Trading Oy, a family office, in January.” Before becoming Head of Investments in early 2020, Paukkeri spent a decade as a portfolio manager at Aalto University’s endowment, focusing on hedge funds and liquid alternatives.

Aalto University is now seeking a new Head of Investments to manage its €1.5 billion endowment fund. The Aalto University endowment builds its portfolio around several risk-based building blocks, including interest rate risk, credit risk, equity risk, and alternative risk. The “alternative risk” building block features market-neutral diversifying strategies such as trend following, systematic risk premia, equity market-neutral, global macro, relative value and arbitrage strategies, among others.

At the close of 2023, Aalto University’s endowment had 18 percent of its portfolio allocated to alternative risk. This segment delivered a return of 11.1 percent in 2022 and 2.2 percent in 2023, generating an annualized return of 2.1 percent from mid-2010 through the end of last year. Overall, Aalto University’s endowment portfolio achieved an annualized return of 5.4 percent from mid-2010 to the end of 2023.

Photo by Unto Rautio