The success of the UK local government pool, Border to Coast, is a walking advertisement for the benefits of scale. In the three years since formation the fund has proven success on both sides of the ledger, providing significant cost savings for its underlying partner funds and giving them access to investments they would not have dreamed of as single entities. The passionate CIO of Border to Coast, Daniel Booth, talks to Amanda White about the fund’s success and what is next in its quest for constant improvement.

Back in 2015 the UK government directed the 90+ local council pension funds to be organised into eight pools of capital enabling the more efficient management of assets.

Border to Coast is the largest of those with 11 underlying funds with £55 billion in assets.

While the asset allocation ultimately stays with the local councils, the pools implement the investments and work closely with the partners in what is a big change management program. Border to Coast is building a funds management organisation and a big part of that has been to collaborate and ensure investment funds are built the partners funds will ultimately use.

“Cost is a big driver but we are not aiming to be low cost,” says CIO of Border to Coast, Daniel Booth in an interview with Top1000funds.com. “We are aiming to be a high-performance organisation that is efficient.”

Building the team

Border to Coast has undergone rapid growth over the past three years as it built an asset management business that is customer-owned and focused.

The investment team has increased from 15 to 50 people, with 100 in total within the organisation. About two thirds of the team has been hired in the past 18 months, during lockdown, and about a quarter of the employees had never been to the office until the past month when the office re-opened.

“It is important for culture that people are with each other especially for younger people,” Booth says. “It takes a bit more logistics to be working in this hybrid way, to make sure the right teams are in on the right days. People have been apart for such a long time, there is an excitement to be back. There was a bit of fear and hesitancy at first, but people are social creatures and like to be around each other.”

From a personal point of view Booth said when working from home he missed the creative conversations and the brainstorming with other people.

“Pre lockdown I thought it would have been the technical things we needed to do in person but it’s the creative stuff, and brainstorming is hard to do remotely.”

There are six teams reporting to Booth: the internal equities and fixed income teams, external equities and fixed income, alternatives which includes private equity, private credit and real estate, and then the risk and research team.

Internal versus external

The fund manages about £25 billion of the pools’ assets, soon to be £30 billion, in active equity and fixed income, with the internal and external split evenly.

“As we have been building the business it’s been partly about what we want to build in house,” Booth says.

For example in emerging markets there is an internal fund but for some countries, such as China, the opportunity for high alpha meant the fund was willing to pay for external management to get value.

Generally speaking the fund expects more from its external managers. To justify the fees a 2 per cent outperformance for external management is the benchmark versus 1 per cent outperformance for internal management.

“We expect more for external management. We look at the relative cost savings to manage internally, the probability of success and the alpha potential among other things. There are about 10 things on our checklist.”

But it’s not always black and white. For example investment grade credit management could easily have been managed internally but the cost savings were minimal so the fund decided to award it to external managers.

Border to Coast manages about £6 billion in alternatives with this asset class expected to have the most growth. About 40 per cent of that is in infrastructure and 30 per cent in both private credit and private equity.

“We are raising larger sums each year. As the underlying client funds diversify they are increasing alternatives,” Booth says.

At the moment the investments are mainly funds but it does have some co-investment and Booth is keen to build that out.

“We are generating quite meaningful savings through the aggregation of the assets and getting discounts. Alternatives have a very costly implementation cost so we are making sure we are as efficient as possible on funds and co-investment which is usually fee free or half fees.”

Both internal and external management is outperforming benchmarks Booth says.

“We are generating about £250 million of alpha over passive each year through active management. Our partner funds are aligned with that, they want us to optimise performance subject to a reasonable cost base.”

Cost savings

In addition to the alpha being generated, the fund is targeting £250 million of cost savings over 15 years.

Fee savings are evident across a range of areas; cheaper mandates on passive; savings on active mandates due to scale; co-investment in alternatives; implementation efficiency; and internal management.

Internal management has already proven to have demonstrable cost savings for partner funds. On the launch of the Sterling index-linked bond fund one partner fund transferred a £500 million investment resulting in a £0.7 million annualised cost saving. In addition, when two partner funds transferred to the global equity alpha fund it resulted in £0.9 million in annual savings for them.

Booth says the benefits of a professional investment team also means the underling funds can benefit from efficiency of implementation with attention paid to withholding tax treaties, tax optimisation, and stock lending revenues as well as service provider fees.

In July last year Border to Coast completed its first crossing deal on behalf of two of the partner funds. As part of strategic asset allocation changes one fund was looking to make an investment in UK listed equity and another was looking to redeem. Through collaboration the transactions were managed at the same time and the cost of cash redemptions was reduced resulting in £3.5 million of cost savings. Since then a further five crossing deals have been completed.

Investment opportunities

While the cost savings are real and plentiful, Booth says a more interesting benefit of pooling for the underlying fund partners is the investment opportunity that scale presents.

Border to Coast has produced 10 vehicles so far across public and private markets.

“We are giving them access to opportunities they didn’t have before including capacity constrained managers,” Booth says noting Brazilian infrastructure and Chinese healthcare as examples of nuanced investments.

In addition the larger alternatives firms want to build relationships with large funds as strategic partners and the local councils as individual funds wouldn’t have been able to do that.

“We can get access to oversubscribed funds where we haven’t been cut back on allocations, venture funds, access to deal flow, co-investments where our pipeline is very active, and we are in a good position to be quite selective,” he says. “Also having a professionally managed team with external managers supporting us, is allowing active management and that means risks are managed and we are earning a premium.”

A centralised professionally managed investment function means there is less dependence on any one person and instead there is a big team with established processes. It also means the fund can be a collective voice for its partner funds for company engagement and as a catalyst for change.

The fund has just announced a net zero commitment for 2050 and is also working with industry initiatives such as one with Albourne to improve reporting on alternative assets.

What’s next

The fund continues to develop new investment vehicles for its underlying partners. From an investment perspective Booth says early stage venture is interesting at the moment as it benefits from the environment. He also says emerging market asset valuations look attractive and currencies look cheap.

“There are a lot of the interesting opportunities there like infrastructure and healthcare. These are interesting things clients couldn’t do by themselves.”

There will be significant expansion into private markets. There is significant interest in specific climate opportunities from new technology to operating assets.

Global and UK real estate is the focus for the next little while, with the pooling of real estate a large undertaking due to the intricacies of tax among other things.

New equity offerings will also be developed including global equities with different weightings and work on factors.

“Everything we do is fundamental active. All the equities indexes are very concentrated and we think in a period where active management is going to do very well we are well positioned for that.”

There is also a plan to build out the co-investment programs for alternatives which will require a lot of work.

“I am a big believer in continuous improvement, everything we do we can do better. We want to continually enhance our offering and learn best practice and keep evolving,” Booth says.

From a process and management perspective the fund is building out the tangential parts of the organisation such as the research team, risk management and systems that allow for more active positions among the internal team.

“We want to be able to review positions and understand the risks. Risk management is managing the probability distribution of your outcomes and so while research allows us to take active positions, risk management allows the distribution to be managed,” he says.

“I am proud of building a funds manager during a change management project, during a crisis and producing good performance. This is a tribute to a lot of hard work from a lot of people.”

 

America’s university endowments are reporting blistering returns thanks to soaring equity markets and their large venture allocations. Washington University’s managed endowment pool is an outstanding performer, returning a whopping net 65 per cent for the fiscal year 2020-21 and nearly doubling its size to $15.3 billion. CIO Scott Wilson explains how they did it.

When Scott Wilson took the CIO helm at Washington University Investment Management Company (WUIMC) in St Louis, Missouri, in 2017 he set about a radical overhaul of the endowment’s investment partners and underlying holdings. He added capital with high-conviction partners and redeemed capital from others, refrained from investing in certain follow-on funds and sold holdings on the secondary market.

The results of that overhaul were dramatically on show in the fund’s 65 per cent returns, the bulk of which Wilson attributes to performance from investments and capital deployed since 2017.

“We have turned over the vast majority of the portfolio since 2017. Given the huge move in capital markets last year, probably 50 per cent or more of our returns can be attributed to being mostly long risk assets.”

Concentration

The 2017 overhaul and decision to increase investments with the fund’s most favoured managers was part and parcel of a deliberate strategy to strategically concentrate the portfolio, allowing for exposure to fewer, but more substantial, investment positions in which WUIMC’s managers have the highest levels of conviction.

“Concentrating capital has increased our tracking error significantly but we have not seen a significant increase in volatility. We have more idiosyncratic risk that is driving returns which doesn’t necessarily translate into higher volatility. The primary risk is still choosing who to partner and invest capital with,” says Wilson.

Volatility

Moreover, Wilson stresses that diversification isn’t lost with a concentrated approach.

“On a look-through basis we still have many hundreds of individual exposures broadly diversified across asset class and geography. You can make a strong argument that we are still overly diversified.”

Diversification is achieved via a bottom-up process, he explains.

“We try to concentrate capital in investments that we think have independent outcomes over our 10+ years investment time horizon – we believe this is real diversification.” He notes, however, that viewing investment in public equity and private equity as “separate asset classes” is irrational. “The primary difference between those two asset classes is how often they are marked to market and they are both still driven by equity factor risk.”

Wilson stresses the fund “rarely adds” new managers – much of the last year was “spent trying to figure out how our current roster of partners were taking advantage of price movements and volatility in certain markets.”

Still, the strategy makes manager selection crucial, and the team search far and wide for the best, including smaller firms, or firms that are newer to the investment industry in the hunt. A recent review of the university’s portfolio revealed more than one-third of the endowment’s assets are managed by diverse-led firms.

“We look for partners who we think are great investors with an attractive opportunity set, definable and repeatable investment process, an appropriately sized capital base and who we can partner with closely,” he says.

Managers also have to agree on the fees in a structure that pays for producing exceptional returns – not by raising and accumulating assets or charging high management fees.

Manager due diligence involves multiple in-person meetings with the senior investment leadership, but also with analysts, traders, and operations professionals at the GP. The team also engages with the senior management team of the underlying portfolio companies.

Alongside concentration and diversification, other key strategy pillars include fundamental orientation that prioritises the characteristics of each individual portfolio holding rather than macroeconomics.

Revisions to the strategic asset allocation are infrequent and gradual – and as of June last year assets were divided between real assets (6 per cent) cash and fixed income (6 per cent) absolute return (11 per cent) global equities (32 per cent) and private capital (45 per cent). Annualised returns for WUIMC’s MEP for three, five and 10 years are 24.9 per cent, 19.2 per cent and 12.2 per cent, respectively.

Impact allocation to grow

Going forward Wilson hopes that impact will grow to account for more than 30 per cent of the endowment. The fund does not screen for impact, but it plays a major role in the investment process.

“We believe that ESG is a significantly long-term investment risk and therefore those companies that are having a positive impact will have more sustainable business models over our investment horizon. We believe this will positively impact both risk and return over time.”

College and university endowments have posted their strongest annual performance in 35 years, according to new data from Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service. The median return before fees was 27 per cent in the 2021 fiscal year, which ended on June 30.

Co-head of the Willis Towers Watson Thinking Ahead Group, Tim Hodgson argues that to solve human issues, such as climate change, investors need to bring their heart as well their head to the job.

For me it happened in a very old room. I was told by the facilitator that the group would now take part in a structured exercise. My role was to say nothing. I sat and listened, and by the end I was angry. I don’t often get angry, but I was Greta Thunberg-level angry. I had passed from head knowledge to heart knowledge. It was May 2019.

I thought I knew about climate change and had already been talking about it as one of the two biggest risks facing humans. But this was only head knowledge. It was an intellectual exercise. I could pick it up and put it down when I chose. Heart knowledge can’t be put down. It can be supressed for a while, but it can’t be ignored indefinitely. Heart knowledge has been internalised. It is now part of who you are.

It is worth stressing that I am in no way suggesting we subjugate our thinking to our feelings or emotions. We are still talking about knowledge. In fact, we are talking about the exact same knowledge. The difference is how the knowledge affects our behaviours. Head knowledge implies rationality and cost-benefit analysis; a careful weighing up of probabilities and consequences and the like. Heart knowledge has access to all this data, but runs it through a new algorithm – call it the ‘love algorithm’, if you like.

Here are a couple of illustrations – one preposterous and the other more reasonable. Imagine one of my three children falls into a dangerous ocean current. Should I use head knowledge to assess the probabilities and consequences, and possibly conclude that being alive for the remaining two is the best course of action? Or should I let love decide for me – use my heart knowledge and jump, whatever the possible cost?

More reasonably, consider a subsistence farmer and her family, somewhere in Africa. Head knowledge recognises that climate change and the associated increase in extreme weather events is going to make her life more difficult. Heart knowledge knows this too, but also feels a twang of pain. In neither case do we immediately change our portfolio. But perhaps we would consider future investment opportunities differently.

What’s driving this thought experiment? I feel frustrated at the lack of movement relative to (my judgement of) the size of the need in respect of climate change and wonder if it is, in part, as a result of head knowledge that hasn’t yet made it to heart knowledge.

Also by reframing climate change as the symptom of a human-built system, I’m led to ask how best to fix a system so that it is fit for human habitation. With head knowledge alone? Or do we need heart knowledge for that too?

Furthermore, we think it is becoming increasingly apparent that individuals want and deserve personal attention from their employers. For their part, employers can become more humanistic and approach every issue from a human angle first. We believe organisations will need to provide purpose and meaning as key attractions for talent. I interpret this as a shift in emphasis – to more fully embracing issues of the heart alongside the traditional strengths of the head.

Then there is the net-zero journey. We foresee that investment decisions are likely to become harder and harder as time passes. If the rate at which I have committed to decarbonise my portfolio is faster than the actual opportunity set, will head knowledge alone show the way forward? Or might heart knowledge make the decision making easier and better?

In her book, Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth describes five different levels of response a corporate could take in confronting planetary boundaries and social floors, ranging from ‘do the minimum’ through ‘do my fair share’ to ‘be generous’. Head knowledge might, by working very hard on enlightened self-interest, get a bit beyond ‘fair share’ – but the natural domain of head knowledge is ‘fair share’. Being generous is the natural domain of heart knowledge – because love is largely about putting the interests of others above self.

Combining these thoughts suggests that by bringing more of our heart to work, not to replace but to complement our heads, will result in us being more human and effective at solving human-caused problems. Starting with compelling us to spend more of our self in pursuing solutions to climate change.

These thoughts work more logically at an individual level, but they can be mapped to the heart of organisations and their purposes. And increasingly, investment organisations are being drawn by society and their employees to become more purposeful, particularly in response to the climate crisis.

So if you’re not sure what that nagging feeling is at decision-making time perhaps it’s heart knowledge and perhaps, if not surpressed, it will help make for a better choice, and a better organisation, all things considered.

Tim Hodgson is co-head of the Thinking Ahead Group, an independent research team at Willis Towers Watson and executive to the Thinking Ahead Institute (TAI).

In his first interview since becoming CIO, Michael Wissell tells Sarah Rundell about the plans for developing HOOPP’s portfolio, which includes a focus on climate change, inflation and innovation while always keeping an eye on the total portfolio.

The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, HOOPP, the C$104 billion ($82 billion) plan for Ontario’s hospital and community-based healthcare sector is in the process of developing a new sleeve to its equity portfolio that will have less exposure to the negative consequences of climate change – and more to the energy transition.

It reflects the fund’s ongoing shift to explore how best to build sustainability into its policy portfolio in a change that new CIO Michael Wissell says reflects the type of innovation he wants to guide the fund in the years ahead.

“We continue to build our sustainable program in various ways and are excited to be going down this road.”

Stocks will be individually selected by the public equities team and HOOPP has already developed an internal benchmark. The fund is also working with service providers to help make the selections and may partner with external funds.

“We haven’t decided at this point,” Wissell, who took over the helm last month following three years heading up the capital markets and total portfolio division, says.

The move into climate opportunities chimes with HOOPP’s guiding mantra to identify risk and act before it transpires, a characteristic Wissell believes is the bedrock to the fund’s enduring success, encapsulated in 10-year 11 per cent returns. For example, wary of the risk to its liabilities from the possibility of a long period of very low interest rates, HOOPP built out an LDI strategy in 2007. Identifying the importance of liquidity and the risk of not having enough, ensured ample dry powder to take advantage of low asset prices in March 2020.

As for today, he’s not just readying the fund for “one of the greatest transitions in human history.” Inflation, now more of an issue than at any point in his 30-year career, is also front of mind.

Preparing for inflation

Preparing for inflation, and the risk rising prices poses to HOOPP’s large fixed-income allocation is driving current strategy to scale back the liability matching portfolio and reassess what has been a key part of the fund’s investment thesis for the past 15 years. (See Amanda White’s podcast interview with Jeff Wendling Liability-driven investing 2.0)

“We’ve taken that portfolio down and it is now as small as it has been in a very long time.”

Rather than have a fixed target or notional amount, the reduction is managed relative to HOOPP’s liabilities. The portfolio still includes a large position in index-linked bonds that have outperformed, plus exposure to breakevens that Wissell says has served the fund well.

Still, having less nominals on board is now key. Canadian CPI is running higher than it has for some time and a risk that the fund has always been cognisant of has moved centre stage.

“We have a core view in terms of things that might happen and around which we then prepare accordingly. In this conversation, you have to bring up inflation.”

Reducing the allocation to fixed income to better manage the risk of inflation comes alongside building out the infrastructure allocation. Despite the competition for assets, Wissell says HOOPP is “seeing a lot of interesting opportunities” and the new portfolio is growing “quicker” than thought.

Private assets

Away from inflation, other priorities including continuing to grow HOOPP’s allocations to private assets, where he says an increasing focus will be direct deals. The fund is already a renowned investor in real estate and areas like logistics, and has much dry powder to deploy. As it increases its allocation to private assets – via both new investments as well as re-deploying capital coming off investments made years ago – he doesn’t anticipate a shake-up in GP relationships.

“We feel we have it right; we are not growing our GPs.”

That said, new people bought into the team (HOOPP is currently looking for a new head of private equity) will of course bring new relationships and the fund is growing its GP relationships in infrastructure.

“Some of our peer plans don’t use GPs here but we feel they have a role to play and we are going to continue to do so.”

Despite the equity diversification benefits of investing in China and other emerging markets he questions if the risk is currently rewarded enough: HOOPP’s modest exposure compared to peer plans fits for now.

“We are looking for opportunities, but only when returns are commensurate with risk will we add [more Chinese investment] across our investment platform.”

The push into more private assets means materially boosting HOOPP’s headcount in an expansion that will also require a degree of innovation. Safeguarding the fund’s culture and the elements that have made the fund so successful all the while acting quickly enough to ensure the investment team can avail itself of the opportunities out there requires careful choreography.

A challenge encapsulated in how best to practically house the growing investment team – targeting a January 2022 return to office – but keep the ideas and creativity born from a tight knit group alive.

“As of today, the entire investment management team has sat on one floor which has had real benefits around culture and ideas. Now we are growing, this is not going to be possible anymore,” Wissell says.

The new CIO concludes by outlining his other key priority as he takes the helm. Alongside innovation and identifying risk before it transpires, his focus will be on the total fund: what the plan does in aggregate and the absolute level of return matters most.

“You can focus on the value added, but you must never lose sight of the actual plan return as well. For example, having a total plan return of -5 per cent although you made 1 per cent is not a good outcome.”

The $1.23 trillion Norwegian sovereign wealth fund celebrates 25 years of investing in fixed income. Sarah Rundell looks at some of the highs and lows of its fixed income portfolio which makes up around 30 per cent of fund.

What began as a tiny NOK2 billion ($0.23 billion) allocation spun out of the Norwegian Central Bank’s management of foreign exchange reserves 25 years ago invested mostly in liquid, short duration German Bunds, has grown into a global NOK2,925 billion ($334 billion) portfolio. Still, the task of fixed income in Norway’s giant sovereign wealth fund remains the same: reduce return fluctuations, meet liquidity needs and reap bond market risk premiums.

The allocation (currently around 30 per cent of the entire $1.37 trillion portfolio) has weathered the financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis, negative rates and exceptional monetary policy that has helped create a current environment of risk reward very much skewed to risk.

In a recent paper, asset manager Norges Bank Investment Management’s (NBIM) fixed income team reflects on a dynamic, active strategy over an extraordinary two decades that has come to fruition with its most stellar results in the last five years. Between 2016 to 2020 the relative performance for internal fixed-income management was 45 billion kroner ($5.1 billion), the most successful period for the allocation in the history of the fund. Returns since inception are around 86 billion kroner ($9.8 billion)

Steep learning curve

Today’s success is a culmination of years of hard-won experience. Up until the end of 1997, the fund was managed in line with Norway’s long-term foreign exchange reserves with the bulk invested in European government bonds: active management of currency and interest rate risk was deemed inappropriate for a central bank and index management was front and centre. By the time the fund’s current head of global fixed income, Asgeir Haugland, joined NBIM in autumn 2002 as an assistant portfolio manager, strategy had evolved to a handful of independent portfolio managers running enhanced indexing strategies in search of alpha with an absolute return focus. They were part of a front office made up of around 20 people he recalls, speaking in a webinar accompanying the report.

A strategy and team ill prepared for the turmoil lying in wait.

“The losses in 2007 and 2008 were unforeseen” says Haugland who describes “hard” and “long days” at the peak of the GFC. Advanced indexing strategies suddenly began to correlate with the wider market bringing large performance swings and uncertainty.

“During the financial crisis we discovered common factors to much of our risk taking. There was nowhere to hide,” he says, adding that hitherto reliance on tracking errors and historical correlations “wasn’t enough.”

Come 2009 NBIM had begun to sell down its fixed income allocation, purchasing equities at attractive valuations and ending fixed income’s reign as the largest asset class in the portfolio. Strategy shifted to reducing the use of leverage and the fund recovered mark to-market losses from legacy assets. The allocation was in better shape to capture opportunities in the next crisis: turmoil in European sovereign debt.

The GFC triggered other key strategy shifts over the ensuing years. Since 2002 the role of external managers had grown as the fund outsourced strategic exposure to mortgage-backed securities in the US. Poor manager performance going into and during the GFC led to external management being phased out.

“We realised that external mandates also required internal management of that same segment; we needed the capacity to take assets back home if necessary,” says Haugland.

The fund’s growing internal focus got another boost in the next, seismic shift. NBIM set up a fixed income trading operation, creating a new division of labour that allowed portfolio managers to focus on long-term portfolio construction and traders on short-term timing and sourcing liquidity in the market.

Cue the start of a trading prowess that proved its worth during 2020 COVID induced market turmoil when even US Treasuries, the bedrock of the global financial system, became illiquid and difficult to trade. The most hectic period of turnover in the history of the fixed income allocation was underway as the government began to finance its fiscal response to Covid-19. Elsewhere, market dislocations provided relative value opportunities while governments’ scramble for liquidity and huge issuance programmes added to the largesse: offering issuers liquidity by purchasing new bonds in syndication processes was an attractive investment strategy, especially in the Euro area.

The future

Today NBIM’s team comprises 25 portfolio managers, 10 analysts and 15 traders across different time zones invested across geographies, currencies, sectors and types of issuers – all overseen by specialist teams including increasingly expert trading and credit analysis. A uniform incentive structure is based on the portfolio performance achieved by the entire team with team members with less responsibility specifically encouraged to voice their opinions and challenge views and market outlooks to avoid groupthink.

Looking to the future, Haugland believes the segmented nature of fixed income will continue to offer opportunities for NBIM’s active specialists, doing something different to the other big fixed income players. Central Banks remain the most dominant, buying bonds in line with monetary policy rather than any risk reward analysis. Elsewhere, large passive fixed income investors plus those seeking to match their liabilities dominate.

“There are opportunities for us because we are more active and we know how these passive fund managers work,” he concludes.

This session drew on themes of the conference and discuss with asset owners what the portfolios of the future will look like, particularly examining how investors plan to build robust portfolios to meet changing investment regimes.

Speaker

Dan Bienvenue assumed the role of interim chief investment officer in August 2020.
He oversees an investment office of nearly 400 employees and manages investment portfolios of roughly $400 billion, including the Public Employees’ Retirement Fund and affiliate funds.
As deputy chief investment officer, Dan oversees total fund investment and operational strategies and collaborates with the managing investment directors and their teams to implement asset allocation and investment strategies. He also oversees the investment office’s business management needs, including strategic planning, financial reporting, expense management, and talent management.

He joined CalPERS in September 2004. During his tenure he has held several leadership roles with the investment office, including concurrent roles as the interim chief operating investment officer and managing investment director of global equity. He served as the managing investment director overseeing global equity from 2014-20, and as senior portfolio manager in internal equity.

Prior to CalPERS, Bienvenue was a principal and senior portfolio manager with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), leading an international equity portfolio management team responsible for $55 billion across developed and emerging markets. Before BGI, his work experience includes sales and trading in the analyst program with J.P. Morgan Securities in New York.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree in economics, cum laude, from the University of California, Davis, where he was an Academic All-American in wrestling. He also holds both the CFA and CAIA charters.

Moderator

White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events. She is responsible for directing the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes. She is the editor of www.top1000funds.com, the online news and analysis site for the world’s largest institutional investors. White has been an investment journalist for more than 20 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 from Sydney University and a Master of Arts in Journalism from the University of Technology, Sydney. She was previously a columnist for the Canadian publication, Corporate Knights, which is distributed by the Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. White is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program consists of 22 fellows and seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry.