Janus Capital's George Batejan: The Mechanical Engineer

Evergreen
After five years it was on to OppenheimerFunds as CIO, and from there to Evergreen Investments in 2003. Both firms were far smaller than Chase or AIG. When it came to any technology issues, the buck stopped with Batejan. Once, he walked into the Oppenheimer CEO’s office and within 30 seconds had convinced her to approve a million-dollar mainframe upgrade. Try to imagine doing that at Chase.

One of Batejan’s first acts at Oppenheimer was an organizational one. “Who here supports the investment team?” he asked during a meeting with technologists. Three hands went up. He wondered: On a team of 500 people, what are the rest of them doing?

The focus should always be on what can be done to help the portfolio managers. It’s a philosophy he went on to apply at Evergreen, the investment management arm of Wachovia, and Janus, an asset manager based in Denver whose $154 billion under management place it among the world’s 50 largest, according to Institutional Investor. 

“Watching him in this role, it really is amazing how much he understands the business,” says Amy Carroll, Janus’ vice president of operational risk and process management, who also served under Batejan at Evergreen. “What are the corporate goals, what are we working on, how do they tie into the corporate objectives? But he doesn’t lose sight of the fact that you need a solid technology foundation.” 

Fast Cars
A solid technology foundation is also what underpins Batejan’s personal automobiles. Fourteen years ago, the self-proclaimed muscle car fan started running the Tire Rack One Lap of America, a grueling series of races that can put 5,000 miles on a motor in a week. Two partners jump into a car on the first Saturday in May and don’t get out until they’ve driven in a loop halfway around the country in eight days, stopping at a minimum of eight race tracks along the way to compete in time trial races. As the event advertises: “Personal hygiene takes a holiday and friendships (sometimes marriages) are stretched to the limits.”

The competition was created by Brock Yates, senior editor of Car and Driver magazine, as a legal version of his Cannonball Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, a high-speed coast-to-coast street race from the 1970s. That early event, established to prove that drivers could safely navigate the federal highway system at speeds over 55 mph—then the legal limit—was immortalized in the 1981 Burt Reynolds movie Cannonball Run.

The modern version, run by Brock Yates, Jr., is more about vehicle preparation and endurance. Cars have to be set up to reach maximum speed on a closed course while enduring 300- to 900-mile treks at night. People show up in everything from Mazda Miatas to Cadillac CTSs to SUVs. One team even showed up in a Smart car one year.

Batejan has taken his Dodge Viper up to 178 mph on the straightaway at the famed Daytona oval. Asked whether that’s dangerous, he shrugs as if he’d never considered the idea. It’s worth noting that Edmunds.com rates the Viper as having “just enough safety equipment to make it legal.”

Batejan says he once saw a Viper overcorrect during a race in Wisconsin, hit the wall, and barrel-roll down the track. He was sure the man was dead. But the car landed on its wheels and the driver walked away uninjured.

During the year, he takes periodic trips to a local track or drag-racing strip to flex the Viper’s muscles. This year’s Tire Rack One Lap of America event even came to the High Plains Raceway in Colorado, allowing some of his employees to watch him.