Silver Creek names new president

Seattle-based investment manager Silver Creek Capital Management has promoted managing director Bob Ratliffe as its new president.

Ratliffe replaces Brian Weeks, who left the firm in January after 12 years to return to Russel Investments as head of its Americas Institutions business.

Ratliffe joined Silver Creek in 2012 as managing director, initially focusing on business development before going on to establish the firm’s real assets division.

In a statement released earlier this month, Silver Creek highlighted Ratliffe’s role in the creation of Twin Creeks Timber, a  joint venture between Plum Creek Timber Company and a group of institutional investors including the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, the Washington State Investment Board and the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund established in 2015. The vehicle began with a $560 million portfolio of 260,000 acres spread across five states in the US Southeast.

Silver Creek acts as fiduciary and fund administrator for Twin Creeks and performs fund administration while Weyerhauser, which merged with Plum Creek later in 2015, serves as property manager.

Ratliffe told Agri Investor that the formation of Twin Creeks was motivated by investors’ desire for a lower fee structure and greater say in the timing of asset sales. Some investors were frustrated with a lack of alignment in 2000s-era vintage timber funds that contributed to the rise in secondaries transactions in the sector, he said, adding that those early vintage funds could help shape the market going forward as they come due.

“There’s clearly a movement of people thinking about how they get their capital aligned for the transactions that will result from a fair number of 10-year timber funds coming to the end of their life,” Ratliffe said.

Before joining Silver Creek, Ratliffe spent nine years as a senior partner with institutional real estate advisory firm Bentall Kennedy and earlier in his career held senior management roles with Eagle River Investments and McCaw Cellular Communications.

Silver Creek is an alternative investment firm with $6.4 billion in assets under management that is focused on private credit, hedge fund strategies and timber. The firm’s clients include public and private retirement plans, insurance companies, foundations, endowments and others.