Former Aetna CEO to be co-leader of Connecticut hedge fund Bridgewater
Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, announced Monday that Mark Bertolini, former chief executive officer of Aetna before it was purchased in 2018 by CVS Health Corp., is the new CO-CEO.
The Westport-based hedge fund, with assets under management of about $150 billion, said Bertolini, who is co-chair of Bridgewater’s Operating Board of Directors, and Deputy CEO Nir Bar Dea, a retired major and a platoon leader in the Israeli Defense Forces, begin as co-ceos immediately.
They succeed David H. Mccormick, an under secretary of the Treasury in the administration of President George W. Bush. He is considering a run for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania being vacated by Republican Pat Toomey, who is retiring.
“Through this CO-CEO model, we are getting a powerful combination of Nir, a well-respected internal leader who has worked closely with Dave, management, and the (chief information officers) for six years, and Mark, who has enormous experience and is a globally respected and proven CEO,” founder Ray Dalio and other executives said in a statement posted on its website.
Bridgewater said Bertolini led Aetna’s transition from a “traditional health insurance company to a consumer-oriented health care company focused on delivering holistic, integrated care in local communities.”
Dalio, Bridgewater’s co-chief investment officer,
and Bertolini share an outlook that’s critical of conventional health care and economics.
Bertolini, 65, has promoted his vision of a modest and local health care systems rooted in communities using “smaller and smaller governance models.” He has said social and economic systems have gotten too big for government to manage.
He negotiated the $69 billion acquisition of Aetna, a presence in Hartford since 1853. He was thwarted a few years earlier when a federal judge blocked his bid to buy Humana Inc. for $37 billion.
Dalio, 72, told an audience at the Greenwich Economic Forum in November 2019 that capitalism needs to be fixed and does not work for the “average person.”
Bridgewater and thengov. Dannel P. Malloy faced criticism in 2016 when the hedge fund received $22 million in forgivable state loans and grants to create 750 jobs and keep the 1,402 positions it then had. The money was to be used to renovate and expand the firm’s Westport headquarters
and operations in Wilton and Norwalk.
Bridgewater has so far been forgiven $10.8 million of a $17 million loan, with a balance of about $6,2 million, said a spokesman for the state Department of Economic and Community Development. The hedge fund received $5 million in grants and was allocated up to $30 million in Urban and Industrial Site Reinvestment Tax Credits that must be earned over 10 years.
It has so far earned $12 million in credits.
Malloy defended the aid, saying Bridgewater had been seeking a possible new headquarters in Westchester County, N.Y.
Mccormick has yet to officially declare his candidacy, but he has aired at least two TV commercials in Pennsylvania, bought a house in Pittsburgh and held closed-door meetings with party officials and donors, according to Associated Press. He has lived in Connecticut since 2009.