CalPERS may have doubled the fees it pays for active management in public equities, but the alpha it generates has quadrupled, says global equity head Simiso Nzima, who has spent three years pruning a roster of nearly 100 managers down to a tightly scored handful. La Caisse's Mario Therrien describes a parallel discipline, using external managers not just for returns but as a "window to the world" on emerging strategies, from quant investing to AI.
The global economy is increasingly bifurcated between the US, Europe and Asia and how the growth projections and geopolitical risks between these regions plays out is of increasing interest to institutional investors. The Fiduciary Investors Symposium in Singapore will look at the return and impact opportunities in the region, and the importance of Asia in the global economy.
It will examine the global economy in the context of the west adapting to a rising Asia; technology decoupling between the US and China; the impact of COVID-19 on Asian economies; the leading role of Asia in technology, smart cities, digitalisation and fintech; ESG risks and opportunities; and portfolio resilience to different macro-economic regimes.
The conference enables asset owners from around the world to explore investment themes, risks and opportunities with their global peers, and explore cutting edge approaches to risk management, liquidity management and portfolio construction.
CalPERS chief investment officer Stephen Gilmore said the $650 billion fund’s upcoming shift to a total portfolio approach will sharpen investment accountability and help it focus capital allocation decisions on fund-level objectives.
In a fireside chat at FIS Harvard, Blue Owl co-founder Doug Ostrover said the fast-growing alternatives shop won’t expand “just for the sake of hubris” as it pursues market leadership through a tightly defined set of offerings. He also unpacked the recent redemption pressure the firm was under and how it plans to move past it.
Reports of America’s decline as a geopolitical and economic power are exaggerated, and the noise investors should learn to ignore is really only the presidency itself, celebrated historian Stephen Kotkin told the Fiduciary Investors Symposium at Harvard.
Trustee of Massachusetts PRIM and state Treasurer Deborah Goldberg said investing with a stewardship and sustainability-conscious approach remains “common sense” for the $116 billion fund, though she said it has been harder for the investor to access some ESG-related information from managers and companies.
The total portfolio approach has allowed Australia’s sovereign wealth fund to capture the themes that will power markets and economies for decades to come, said director of thought leadership Craig Thorburn – but that doesn’t mean it’s not hard to scale.
When Blue Owl Capital came under sustained media pressure over redemptions to its private credit funds, Michael Hitchcock, chief executive of the South Carolina Retirement System Investment Commission (RSIC), didn’t waver. He thinks that what allocators learn from their managers in a period of crisis tells them more than any official due diligence could.
This event looks at the challenges long-term investors face in an environment of disruption including ongoing geopolitical risk and shifts in global economy dynamics. By accessing faculty of England’s most esteemed university, this event will leave investors empowered to tackle disruption in their portfolios and working lives.
The global economy is increasingly bifurcated between the US, Europe and Asia and how the growth projections and geopolitical risks between these regions plays out is of increasing interest to asset owners. This event looks at the return and impact opportunities in the region, and the importance of Asia in the global economy.
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FIS 2026 at Stanford University