Lower management fees and higher returns defined the latest selection process at the Swedish Fund Selection Agency in its latest awarding of active global equity mandates to 12 managers, its largest and most ambitious €20 billion ($23 billion) procurement so far.
In the past few years the £34-billion ($54.7 billion) Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) has substantially diversified its asset allocation, including a large alternatives allocation, and extended its investment team from 65 to 105. In the latest chapter of the fund’s investment department reincarnation, from October this year a separate but fully owned USS company, USS
Whether it involves skill, good judgment or just plain luck, choosing the right manager is never an exact science but recently published research reveals institutional investors can make better decisions by avoiding conventional wisdom around past performance.
There are an estimated 1,600 private equity firms around the world in capital-raising mode at the moment, offering fiduciary investors a smorgasbord of alternatives, split on regions, style, size, stage and sector categorisations. Some recent good news for investors is that, for private equity at least, there is now evidence of performance persistence.
Harvard Management Company will increase manager concentration levels, look closely at commodities and real estate, and bring more assets in-house where appropriate, as it moves into fiscal year 2011 with an unchanged long-term asset allocation.
Investment skill is rare, but it does exist, however investment professionals are neglecting their responsibility to improve and cultivate that skill by lacking the tools to self analyse and improve. Amanda White spoke to Rick Di Mascio, chief executive and founder of Inalytics, about the process of improvement.
A 10 per cent increase in internal investment management results in a 4.2 basis points increase in net value added to a pension fund’s bottom line, according to analysis of the CEM Benchmarking database, which has data on more than 380 global pension funds from 1991 to 2007.
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