Bridgewater Hires Ex-Apple Exec as Co-CEO

Jon RubinsteinBridgewater Associates has hired former Apple executive Jon Rubinstein as co-CEO, the hedge fund confirmed.

Rubinstein will formally join in May as part of the firm’s “management transition… from Ray [Dalio] to the next generation of Bridgewater leaders” over the next four to five years, according to client memos acquired by CIO.

The new co-CEO will take over the position currently held by Greg Jensen, who also serves as co-CIO. Jensen will continue as the co-CIO with his full attention to investment responsibilities.

“In a nutshell, we concluded that it made the most sense to have Greg spend less time on management and more time on investments and that we needed to bring in an exceptional co-CEO with a strong tech focus to supplement the existing leadership,” the client memo said.

Rubinstein worked with Steve Jobs for almost 16 years and was instrumental in the development of the iMac and the iPod during his time at Apple.

He also served as the CEO, president, and board chairman of the personal digital assistants company Palm until its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard (HP).

Rubinstein was most recently the senior vice president of product innovation for the personal system group at HP.

Bridgewater emphasized the importance of technology, “especially since one of our major strategic initiatives in the coming years is to continue building out the systematized decision-making that has been successful in our investment area and to extend it to our management as well.”