Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund with $169 billion in assets, just hired a former Apple executive to join as co-CEO, and it says a lot about the future of the firm.
In a note to clients, Bridgewater said it has hired computer scientist Jon Rubinstein as co-CEO, replacing longtime Bridgewater executive Greg Jensen in that role. Jensen, who's been at Bridgewater for 20 years, will stay on as co-CIO.
Rubenstein spent nearly 16 years working alongside Steve Jobs, first at NeXT and then at Apple. While at Apple, he was the SVP of hardware engineering for the iPod. He then went on to lead smartphone company Palm, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. He is expected to join the Westport, Connecticut-based hedge fund in May.
"[We] need CEOs who can give their full attention to the company's management, and we want Greg to shift his full attentions to investment responsibilities. Also, because technology is so important to us, we wanted one of our co-CEOs to be very strong in that area," the Bridgewater note said.
The note also hinted that it's going to extend technology beyond just its investment process and into its management process.
Technology is pervasively important at Bridgewater, especially since one of our major strategic initiatives in the coming years is to continue building out the systemized decision-making that has been so successful in our investment area and to extend it to our management as well. Jon's track-record of building world class products will be a tremendous boost to the efforts we already have underway. We are thrilled to have him join us and bring his unique management and technology talents to our team.
It will be interesting to see how that plays out. Bridgewater already has what it calls a "radically transparent culture." All conversations are taped and everyone can hear them.
