Investors were challenged to think differently about their portfolios by the latest academic thinking from the London School of Economics at a one-day investment roundtable in London last week.
Chief investment officers from UK and European public and corporate pension funds convened at the London School of Economics for a highly interactive one-day investment think-tank facilitated by conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com and supported by Robeco and Lexington Partners.
Delegates
Ciaran Barr, investment director, RPMI Railpen
Tony Broccardo, chief investment officer, Barclays UK Retirement Fund
Pierre Collin-Dufresne, professor of finance, director of the doctoral program of finance, Swiss Finance Institute, EPFL
Neil Cooper, chief investment officer, Greater Manchester Pension Fund
Ronald van Dijk, head of developed market equities, APG
Frank Drukker, senior account manager, Robeco
Stefan Dunatov, chief investment officer, Coal Pension Trustees Investment
James Duberly, chief investment officer, BBC Pension Fund
Elizabeth Fernando, deputy chief investment officer, USS
Anthony Garton, principal, managing partner, Lexington Partners
Wima de Groot, portfolio manager, quantitative equities, Robeco
Sunil Krishnan, head of market strategy, BT Pension Scheme Management Limited
Anders Lundgren, head of manager selection, NEST Corporation
Christopher Polk, professor of finance, director financial markets group, London School of Economics
Kerrin Rosenberg, chief executive, Cardano UK
Pal Ristvedt, partner, Lexington Partners
Olivier Rousseau, executive director, Fonds de reserve pour les retraites
Yazid Sharaiha, head of implementation strategies, Norges Bank Investment Management
John St Hill, principal – portfolio management, Pension Protection Fund
Colin Tate, chief executive, Conexus Financial
Dimitri Vayanos, professor of finance, director of the Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dsyfunctionality, London School of Economics
Amanda White, editor, conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com
Paul Woolley, chair of the Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dsyfunctionality, London School of Economics
Ciarán Barr, investment director, RPMI
Ciarán is an investment director at the £20 billion ($33 billion) RPMI. He is jointly responsible for managing the various investment functions, ranging from advising on client strategy to researching investment ideas, asset allocation and portfolio construction.
He joined RPMI in 2009 and was previously responsible for leading the strategy team in generating views and ideas on international economies and financial markets, as well as recommendations across the portfolios. As part of his role, he regularly presents to the trustees on a wide variety of matters.
Most of Ciarán’s previous career was spent at Deutsche Bank, including the role of chief UK economist. He holds an honours degree in Economics.
Tony Broccado, chief investment officer, The Barclays UK Retirement Fund
Tony Broccardo is the chief investment officer of Barclays Pension Fund and is the head of Oak Pension Asset Management Limited which is the inhouse asset manager for the Barclays pension fund. This circa £18 billion ($30 billion) fund is highly diversified and global.
Broccado’s team is responsible for the asset allocation process, investment management, implementation and risk budgeting of the fund. The fund uses a significant number of external asset class specialists. with 30 per cent of assets under management invested in alternatives.
Broccado’s previous experience includes being an executive director and chief investment officer for F&C Asset Management PLC, and as a global partner and institutional chief investment officer for INVESCO Asset Management Inc. In both roles, over a period of 15 years, he chaired the global asset allocation committee.
Broccado has a MA in Finance and Investment from Exeter University, where he is also a Fellow and lecturer in Investment.
Ronald van Dijk, head of equities developed markets, managing director, APG Asset Management
Ronald van Dijk is a head of equities – developed markets for the €343 billion ($473 billion) APG Asset Management, and a member of APG’s Capital Markets Investments management team.
He is responsible for all equity investment activities in global developed markets overseeing internal portfolio management teams in fundamental equity and quantitative equity strategies, and manager selection teams. These multi-strategy investments exceed €100 billion ($136 billion). He functions as a head of the quant equities group having direct oversight responsibility for systematic investment strategies in developed and emerging markets. Ronald is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Pierre Collin-Dufresne, professor of finance, director of the doctoral program of finance, Swiss Finance Institute @ EPFL
Pierre Collin-Dufresne joined the SFI @EPFL in 2011 from Columbia University where he held the Carson Family Professor Chair since July 2008. Prior to Columbia, Collin-Dufresne worked three years as a senior portfolio manager in the quantitative strategies group of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
His research on topics such as credit and fixed income security markets, securitisation, and asset allocation has been published in leading academic journals.
He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an associate editor of several academic journals including the Journal of Finance and a co-editor of Finance & Stochastics.
Neil Cooper, investment manager, Greater Manchester Pension Fund
Neil Cooper is an investment manager at the £13 billion ($22 billion) Greater Manchester Pension Fund, with particular responsibility for private equity and alternative investments. A 17 year capital markets career has involved working across all asset classes and asset allocation.
A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment, Cooper graduated from the University of Durham with a degree in Economics.
Wilma de Groot, vice president, portfolio manager, quantitative equities, Robeco
Wilma de Groot is a portfolio manager within the quantitative equities team. Her primary focus is Robeco’s quantitative emerging market strategies. She specialises in quantitative stock selection and portfolio construction. De Groot joined Robeco as a researcher in 2001.
She has published among others in Journal of Banking and Finance, Financial Analysts Journal and VBA Journaal, and she is a guest lecturer at several universities. Mrs. de Groot graduated in Econometrics from Tilburg University. She is a CFA charter holder.
Frank Drukker, senior account manager, Robeco
Frank Drukker is senior account manager within the department of institutional sales and account management. He is responsible for covering Dutch and international institutional clients.
Before that Drukker had several managerial and commercial client responsibilities at Deutsche Bank and ABN AMRO Bank covering public sector and mid cap clients. His last responsibility was managing the mid cap department of Deutsche Bank in Amsterdam. In previous roles he was covering international clients in multiple industries like oil, telecom and banking.
Frank has a M.Sc. in business and economic law from the Rijks Universiteit Utrecht.
James Duberly, director of pensions investments, BBC Pension Trust.
James Duberly is responsible for the in-house investment team which recommends and implements investment strategy on behalf of the trustees of the BBC’s £ 11 billion (18.5 billion) pension scheme.
Prior to joining the BBC Pension Trust in June 2011, James worked at Russell Investments, the Bank for International Settlements and GH Asset Management. He is also the treasurer of the Neuroblastoma Society in the UK.
Stefan Dunatov, chief investment officer, Coal Pension Trustees Limited
Stefan Dunatov is chief investment officer at Coal Pension Trustees Limited, which is responsible for £20 billion ($34 billion) of investments of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme and the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme.
Prior to Coal he was a director at Deutsche Asset Management, portfolio strategist at Equitas, an advisor at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and economist at HSBC. He holds undergraduate degrees in both law and economics from the University of Auckland and a Masters in Economics from The London School of Economics.
He is a member of the 300 Club, a group of global investment professionals whose aim is to raise awareness of the impact of market thinking and behaviours in order to improve investment governance and strategy.
Elizabeth Fernando, deputy chief investment officer, USS
Fernando joined USS in January 1995 as head of European equities and was promoted to deputy chief investment officer in January 2006. She has been involved in the development of the investment department and the long term investment strategy of the fund, and completed the fund’s first direct private equity investments.
In August 2012 she was appointed head of equities which is a new role at USS. The head of equities has responsibility for total equity performance as well as planning, resourcing and budgets for the function and is a member of the executive committee of USSIM.
Prior to joining USS, Fernando worked at Lloyds Investment Managers Ltd in a variety of roles including UK smaller companies and later European equities.
She holds an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University and is an associate member of the UK Society of Investment Professionals (UKSIP).
Anthony Garton, principal/managing director, Lexington Partners
Anthony Garton is a principal of Lexington Partners primarily engaged in investor relations.
Prior to joining Lexington in 2013, Garton was a principal in the fundraising and investor relations team at Cinven. Prior to that, he was a vice president in investment banking at Credit Suisse and an associate director at UBS Investment Bank’s leveraged finance and M & A groups.
Mr. Garton graduated from the University of Bristol with a BA in Hispanic and Latin American studies and is a qualified Chartered Accountant.
Sunil Krishnan, head of market strategy, BT Pension Scheme
Sunil Krishnan joined the BT Pension Scheme in June 2011 as director and head of market strategy. He is responsible for assessing the implications of market and economic conditions for the scheme’s overall investment strategy, and for proposing dynamic changes to the scheme’s asset allocation stance.
He also works on developing the investment process to deliver that strategy.
Prior to joining the scheme, he worked for 10 years at BlackRock and predecessor companies as a manager of multi-asset portfolios, research director and adviser to institutional investors including pension schemes.
He holds a MSc in Economics from Birkbeck College, London and an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford. He is a CFA Charterholder.
Anders Lundgren, head of manager selection, Nest Corporation
Anders Lundgren has an MSc in Theoretical Physics from Chalmers University, Sweden. He also holds an MBA from Imperial College, London and the Certificate in Quantitative Finance.
Lundgren started his career in 1999 at Bloomberg where he worked as an analyst. In 2000 Anders joined Credit Suisse Asset Management as a risk analyst and later worked in the fixed income team serving a wide range of institutional and pension investors. In November 2010, he joined Nest Corporation where he focuses on manager selection and asset allocation. Nest forms the universal occupational pension scheme in the UK.
Christopher Polk, professor of finance, director of financial markets group, London School of Economics
Christopher Polk is professor of finance and the director of the Financial Markets Group Research Centre at the London School of Economics. Professor Polk has also taught at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and Harvard University’s Department of Economics.
He completed a Ph.D. in Finance at the University of Chicago, where he studied under 2013 Nobel Laureate Professor Eugene Fama. Professor Polk is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Professor Polk has published extensively in leading finance and economics journals, including winning paper of the year at the Journal of Financial Economics.
He is an expert on the behaviour of security prices and investment strategies, having advised a wide range of institutions including hedge funds, the EU European Securities and Markets Authority, and the Bank of England on these topics.
Pal Ristvedt, partner, Lexington Partners UK Ltd.
Pal Ristvedt is based in Lexington Partners’ London office where he is responsible for Lexington’s secondary activities outside the United States and leading a team focused on the sourcing, valuation and negotiation of secondary purchases of non-US buyout, venture and mezzanine private equity partnerships.
Prior to joining Lexington Partners in 2001, Ristvedt worked in the investment banking department at Morgan Stanley in London and New York where he was involved in mergers and acquisitions transactions and in the execution of large leveraged financings for private equity funds as a member of the firm’s Financial Sponsor Group.
Ristvedt holds an MBA from INSEAD and a BS in business administration from the University of California at Berkeley.
Kerrin Rosenberg, chief executive, Cardano
Kerrin heads Cardano’s UK team and has overall responsibility for the UK business.
Prior to Cardano, Kerrin was an investment consultant at a major actuarial adviser. He built up a client base of UK pension funds with over £50 billion ($84 billion) assets.
Rosenberg is widely accepted as one of the UK’s thought leaders in the provision of investment advice. His clients have been early adopters of many investment concepts that are commonplace today. This has included quantifying investment objectives relative to liabilities, the use of swaps to manage liability risks, unconstrained equities and alternative assets.
He graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Economics, and qualified as an actuary in 1995.
Olivier Rousseau, executive director, Fonds de reserve pour les retraites
Olivier Rousseau was appointed as a member of the management board of the French Pension Reserve Fund (FRR) in November 2011. FRR is a pension buffer fund with €36 billion ($50 billion) in assets. The Board comprises of a non-executive chairman and two full time executive members. Rousseau also chairs the asset manager selection committee.
After graduating from the French National School of Administration (ENA) in 1986 he joined the French Treasury in Paris. He also holds a degree in political sciences and master degrees in law and economics from the university of Aix-en-Provence.
He worked for 11 years for BNP Paribas in international banking and finance in Paris, Tokyo, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney.
His postings spanned asset swap portfolio management in Tokyo, head of fixed income origination for French issuers, head of corporate and institutional banking at BNP London, chairman of the management committee of BNP Prime Peregrine, group managing director of BNP Paribas equities Australia.
He also served on the resident board of directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London (2004-2006) and as regional economic counsellor at the French embassy in Stockholm (2006-2011).
Dr. Yazid M. Sharaiha, head of implementation strategies, Norges Bank Investment Management, and Adjunct Professor, Imperial College Business School
Yazid Sharaiha is head of implementation strategies, Norges Bank Investment Management, and Adjunct Professor, Imperial College Business School. His career spans both academia and industry.
Prior to his current role, he was managing director and global head of the quantitative and derivative strategies at Morgan Stanley.
He was previously a University Lecturer at Imperial College, London.
He has published over 30 articles in the fields of operations research and quantitative finance, and co-authored/edited two books.
His research interests include asset allocation, enhanced indexation, market microstructure, risk management, and design of derivative strategies in fund management.
Sharaiha holds Masters’ degrees in Engineering and Management Science from UC Berkeley and Imperial College (respectively), and a PhD in Operations Research from Imperial College.
John St Hill, principal – portfolio management, Pension Protection Fund
John St Hill is the principal responsible for equity and fixed income portfolio management at the Pension Protection Fund. He is responsible for choosing investment managers, selecting the benchmarks and constructing the portfolio.
He has 20 years experience in investment management and started his career in equity research. Prior to joining the PPF he held various roles at SEI including head of UK fixed income and head of UK risk management.
St Hill is a graduate of the University of Chicago MBA program. He also holds the CFA and FRM professional designations. His professional interests include measurement of fund manager risk aversion and portfolio construction.
Colin Tate, chief executive, Conexus Financial
Colin Tate has been an investment industry media publisher and conference producer since 1996. In his media career, Tate has launched and overseen dozens of print and electronic publications.
Tate is the chief executive and major shareholder of Conexus Financial Pty Ltd which was formed in 2005, and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.
The company stages more than 20 conferences and events per year – in London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Beijing, Sydney and Melbourne – and publishes five media brands, including the global website and strategy newsletter for global institutional investors conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com.
One of the company’s signature events is the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium.
Conexus Financial’s events aim to discuss the responsibilities of investors in the context of wider societal, and political contexts, as well as the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes.
Tate served on the board of Australia’s most high profile homeless charity The Wayside Chapel for seven years, and has underwritten the welfare of 60,000 people in 28 villages throughout Uganda via The Hunger Project.
Dimitri Vayanos, professor of finance, London School of Economics
Dimitri Vayanos is professor of finance at the London School of Economics, where he also directs the Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality.
He received his undergraduate degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and his PhD from MIT. Prior to joining the LSE, he was faculty member at Stanford and MIT.
His research focuses on financial market liquidity, limits of arbitrage, bubbles and crises, and policy implications.
He is an editor of the Review of Economic Studies, a director of the American Finance Association, a research fellow at CEPR and a past director of its Financial Economics program, and a research associate at NBER.
Amanda White, editor, conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, director of content, institutional, Conexus Financial
Amanda White is the director of institutional content at Conexus Financial. She is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events.
She is the editor of conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, the online news and analysis site for the world’s largest institutional investors. White has been an investment journalist for more than 18 years and has edited industry journals including Investment & Technology, Investor Weekly and MasterFunds Quarterly.
She was previously editorial director of InvestorInfo and has worked as a freelance journalist for the Australian Financial Review, CFO, Asset and Asia Asset Management.
She has a Bachelor of Economics and a Master of Arts in Journalism and is a columnist for the Canadian publication, Corporate Knights, which is distributed by the Globe and Mail and The Washington Post.
Paul Woolley, chair, The Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality
Paul Woolley founded (in 2007) and chairs the Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dyfunctionality at the LSE, the University of Toulouse and UTS in Sydney. Their objective is to replace the paradigm of efficient markets with a theoretical framework that takes account of the principal/agent problems of finance. The policy implications are profound.
Dr Woolley’s career has spanned the private sector, academia and policy-oriented institutions. He worked at the IMF for many years, was on the board of Barings in the 1980’s and started, and headed for 18 years, the London office of GMO.
