Turnover at the top of the Rhode Island treasurer's office has created a vacancy below.
Last week, deputy treasurer James E. Thorsen left his position to take a job managing pension fund investments with State Street Global Advisers Inc., a subsidiary of State Street Bank & Trust Co.
Thorsen served under two-term General Treasurer Nancy J. Mayer, a Republican who lost her bid for a U.S. Senate seat in the November election.
While he praised Mayer's successor Treasurer Paul J. Tavares, a Democrat and former state senator from East Providence, Thorsen said that it was time to move on. Thorsen will be working in State Street Global Advisers' institutional client service group.
"After 13 years in the municipal bond world, I felt it was time to do something a little different," Thorsen said Friday, his last day at the Treasury.
"I think the new treasurer is going to do just fine because he's had involvement with the various functions that relate to the state treasurer's office. He's familiar with how, from a policy position, the office works. He's still got to get his arms around the operational issues, and that's why he needs to bring someone on board very quickly," Thorsen said.
A spokeswoman for Tavares said the loss of Thorsen's expertise is significant, but that the Treasury had begun placing ads for a replacement this week in local papers.
A Rhode Island native, Thorsen worked five years for Alex. Brown & Sons Inc., where he was a vice president in the firm's public finance group in Florida, before coming to the Treasury four years ago.
During his tenure at the Treasury, Thorsen introduced the state's first cash-flow forecasting, administered roughly $750 million in debt issuance and a $300 million cash portfolio, and presided over a pension fund that grew from $3.2 billion to $6.3 billion.
"This has been the best job I've ever had and this was a wonderful experience," he said. "I started this job during the week of the Oklahoma City bombing, and I'm leaving during the impeachment trial of the president of the United States. This was an extraordinary time to be involved in government."
