TIAA CREF INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LLC

TIAA-CREF, which stands for Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund, is a financial services organization that was founded in 1918 by Andrew Carnegie and others, under the leadership of Henry Pritchett. The TIAA portion was created to replace the system of pensions provided by Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a life insurance company to provide a retirement income for professors through fixed premium annuity contracts. As the organization was created on an academic foundation, one of the main desires of the TIAA board and Carnegie Foundation was that educators maintain a role in running the organization. Thanks to conservative investing, the TIAA survived the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The CREF portion was created in 1952 to allow professors to invest in the stock market through the nation’s first variable annuity. This allowed the participants, including Albert Einstein who would be used in the organization’s advertising campaigns, to diversify their retirement funds. The TIAA-CREF would steadily grow, announcing an expansion oversees to Europe with an office in London in 2008. The office would be staffed by local investment professionals who would expand TIAA-CREF’s Global Real Estate division in European countries. TIAA-CREF would then purchase various real estate pieces such as the Festival Place in England and Grand Canal Shoppes in Las Vegas. TIAA-CREF has been recently recognized as the Best Overall Large Fund Company by the Lipper Awards three years in a row. The organization today manages $620 billion in assets with a strong emphasis on “maximizing long-term value for our customer.” TIAA-CREF has grown to become the leading retirement provider for people in academic, research, medical, and cultural fields, serving almost 4 million active and retired employees at over 15,000 institutions. Some of its notable mutual funds include its Growth and Income, Real Estate Securities, and Equity Index, and ETFs include SPDR Gold Shares.