ADIA is increasing its focus on renewables and digital infrastructure as its infrastructure investments mature and a more sector-led strategy is introduced into the planning process according to Karim Mourad, global head of infrastructure at ADIA.

ADIA has been investing in infrastructure since 2008 and has a portfolio across all major sub-sectors and regions with a strategic allocation of up to 5 per cent of the fund.

In the past it has focused on detailed, bottom-up deal assessment but a new focus on sector-led analysis as part of the overall strategy of the fund has meant a more purposeful focus increasing exposures to some growth sub sectors including renewables and digital infrastructure.

It also means fewer but larger acquisitions and managing the overall number of positions, he says.

While some sectors such as passenger-linked transport assets were challenged last year, others including digital infrastructure and renewables experienced a stand-out year.

“We were an early mover in renewables. We recognised the opportunity for a long-term investor to back strong companies such as Renew and Greenko in India as they developed new technologies and new markets,” he says. “Looking ahead, we expect renewables will continue to grow their proportion of global energy capacity, supported by strong tailwinds from the flow of capital into the sector from ESG- focused funds. We have made investments in the USA, Europe, India, and developed Asia, in companies that are at different stages of maturity, and we remain a keen investor in the sector.”

Mourad says the fund is working on various initiatives associated with energy transition more broadly and expects that to be a key area of focus in the near-to medium-term.

In addition the demand for digital infrastructure is only going to grow, he says, and these assets offer a source of diversification uncorrelated to more traditional transport or energy assets.

“Over the past few years, we have built our relationships, capabilities and asset portfolio in the sector, and we have exposure to fiber investments in the USA, Europe and India, exposure to towers across Europe and APAC, and have made inroads into data centers through listed investments. We expect to use the full playbook of strategies to access opportunities in this dynamic and growing sector,” he says.

In July this year ADIA invested $500 million in what is a significant minority stake in EdgePoint Infrastructure, a digital infrastructure platform focused on developing, acquiring and operating telecommunication towers, distributed antenna systems and adjacent infrastructure in Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile Mourad says the benefits of predicable, stable cash flows means core infrastructure remains attractive and the fund will continue to invest in transport and utilities.

In 2020 the fund deployed more capital in infrastructure than any other year including three investments made in listed infrastructure in the last quarter. The listed universe remains an area where the team will focus and look for dislocated or relative value opportunities, Mourad says.

An example of the fund’s approach to infrastructure across both listed and unlisted is its investment in WestConnex in Sydney, Australia. Alongside AustralianSuper, CPPIB and Transurban it holds 51 per cent in the motorway network, WestConnex, and it also participated in Transurban’s equity raising on the Australian Securities Exchange.

“Our listed programme also means we can support key corporates with whom we have strong relationships on strategic transactions where they need to raise capital. This will continue to be important given our ongoing focus on larger, more strategic investments alongside other investors,” Mourad says.

The fund is looking to grow its infrastructure team and is actively recruiting.

 

Decarbonization and value creation can go hand in hand.  The Boston Consulting Group – the consultancy partner of COP26 – has worked across multiple industries and investors to transform high emitting businesses while creating meaningful value in the process.  In this session, BCG shared real world examples based on their experience, including with leading asset owners.

Speakers

Vinay Shandal leads Boston Consulting Group’s principal investors and private equity practice in Canada, and is the global leader of the firm’s sustainable finance and investing business.
Shandal has helped leading pools of capital (pension, sovereign wealth, private equity, infrastructure, and real estate funds) across the globe on strategy, transaction support, and portfolio value creation. Most recently, he has helped a leading investor launch a first-of-its-kind digital Shandal is also a core member of BCG’s Centre for Canada’s Future. In that role, he helps move Canada forward by providing insight and expertise on the country’s most important issues. The centre also aims to convene leaders from the business, government, and nonprofit sectors to work together to achieve impact.
Before he joined the firm, Shandal practiced law for several years in the New York offices of Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. His legal experience includes both private and public company mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, and investments in a range of industries.
Sahandal is a board member of Capitalize 4 Kids, a nonprofit that aims to solve the toughest challenges in children’s brain and mental health.

Thomas Baker joined Boston Consulting Group’s San Francisco office as a consultant in 2011. A core member of the firm’s Energy practice, he has worked for clients in the utility and renewables industries. He is the global topic leader for distributed energy resources at BCG and is a leader of the firm’s green energy and environment sector in North America.

Tom has worked on clean-tech and other power topics with a variety of clients, including utilities, technology, industrial goods, and public sector companies, as well as clean-tech pure-players. He has rich experience across the US and globally, including project work in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Tom is a scientist with experience and expertise in energy and clean technology—specifically solar photovoltaics (PVs) and other renewables, as well as energy efficiency. He has been a featured speaker and panelist at many industry conferences.

Among Tom’s projects are a rooftop-solar investment strategy he developed for a US utility—and a strategy he devised for a PV manufacturer to enter the distributed energy space (energy efficiency, energy storage, demand response). He also helped a US utility transform its business to integrate more renewables and offer new customer solutions.

Before joining BCG, Tom worked in strategic marketing at First Solar and also as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with renewable technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. Tom has contributed to several BCG publications on the energy sector.

In his graduate work at Harvard University, Tom focused on computational solid-state physics applied to heterogeneous catalysis and PV.

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 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 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.

A joint report by the International Energy Agency and the Centre for Climate Finance & Investment at Imperial College examines the risk and return proposition in energy transitions. It looks at publicly traded renewable power and fossil fuel companies in advanced and developing economies calculating the total return and annualized volatility of these portfolios over 5 and 10-year periods. 

Across all portfolios, renewable power generated higher total returns relative to fossil fuel. Annualized volatility for the renewable power was lower than fossil fuel in the global and advanced economies portfolios, but higher in the China and emerging market and developing economies portfolios.

Click here to view Michael’s slides

Speaker

Michael Waldron is an energy investment analyst in the economics and investment office of the International Energy Agency. He was previously the project leader and lead author of the IEA’s Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report, which assesses market trends of renewables in the electricity, transport and heat sectors. At the IEA he has also worked as an oil demand and biofuels analyst. Prior to joining the IEA, Waldron worked as a senior energy markets analyst at Lehman Brothers in New York and London. Waldron obtained his Masters in International Energy Policy & International Economics at Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and his Bachelors degree in Economics & Government at Cornell University.

Moderator

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. He is the chief executive and major shareholder of Conexus Financial, which was established in 2005, and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

The company hosts more than 20 conferences and events globally each year and publishes three digital publications, including the global website and strategy newsletter for global institutional investors Top1000Funds.com, Professional Planner for financial planners, accountants and private bankers in Australia and Investment Magazine for Australian superfunds and institutional investors. One of the company’s signature events is the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium attended by global asset owners and hosted in the Americas and Europe.

Conexus Financial’s events aim 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.

Tate served for seven years on the board of Australia’s most high profile homeless charity, The Wayside Chapel; and he has underwritten the welfare of 60,000 people in 28 villages throughout Uganda via The Hunger Project. In 2021 was appointed as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) for significant service to the community through charitable initiatives.

This session examined the regulatory views around the world and the need for global standards for global investors.

Speakers

Sven Gentner is Head of Unit for asset management in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for financial stability, financial services, and capital markets union.

He started his professional career in the private sector before joining the European Commission in 2004 where he has served in various positions at its Brussels headquarters and abroad. From 2004 to 2006, he was responsible for the coordination of the EU-US Financial Markets Regulatory Dialogue and in the latter period, he served as a member of the private office of Commissioner Charlie McCreevy. From 2007 to 2011, he was Executive Assistant to the Director General of Directorate-General Internal Market and Services with a particular responsibility toward financial services. From there he was seconded to the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa to advise the AUC on building an African internal market, before spending the next year as head of unit for human resources and planning in DG Internal Market and Services. From 2013 to 2015, Sven was a counsellor in the Economic and Financial Affairs Section of the Delegation of the European Union to the United States. He dealt with EU-US regulatory issues and TTIP negotiations in financial services.

Sven holds Master’s degrees in economics from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, and the University of York, UK.

Janine Guillot is chief executive of the Value Reporting Foundation. As CEO, her priorities are to increase use of Integrated Thinking Principles, the Integrated Reporting Framework and the SASB Standards by companies and investors around the world and to advance progress towards a globally accepted comprehensive corporate reporting system. Guillot was CEO of SASB before becoming CEO of the Value Reporting Foundation.
Prior to joining SASB, she served as chief operating investment officer for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). She has held senior leadership positions at Barclays Global Investors and Bank of America. At Barclays Global Investors, she served as chief operating officer for BGI’s European and global fixed income businesses. At Bank of America, she served in chief financial officer and chief administrative officer roles for retail and commercial business units. A graduate of Southern Methodist University (SMU), she began her career as a technical accountant and auditor with Ernst & Young.
In recognition for her leadership at the intersection of sustainability, accounting and finance, Guillot was selected as a 2020 NACD Directorship 100 Honoree and named to the 2020 Business Insider’s 100 People Transforming Business list.

Carine Smith Ihenacho is responsible for the governance and compliance area, which includes ownership and responsible investment activities, control and operational risk, compliance and legal services.
Ihenacho was appointed chief governance and compliance officer in October 2020. She joined Norges Bank Investment Management in August 2017 as global head of ownership strategies and was promoted to chief corporate governance officer in January 2018.
Prior to joining Norges Bank Investment Management, Ihenacho was vice president legal and chief compliance officer in Statoil ASA. She has more than 20 years’ experience as a lawyer, working in both financials and the oil and gas industry, as well as in law firms. She also has extensive board experience.
Ihenacho holds a law degree from the University of Oslo, a Master of Law from Harvard Law School and a Master of Economics from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH).cal engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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 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 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.

This session examined the challenges investors face including ideology, working with boards, culture and scalable investments. 

Speakers

William (Bill) Lee is senior vice president and chief investment officer for NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP), overseeing its $9.5 billion investment program including endowment, retirement and current assets, and managing the office of investments team responsible for all of NYP’s investment assets. Previously, Lee was chief investment officer and vice president of foundation and pensions investments at Kaiser Permanente. Beginning in 2005, he served as chair of Kaiser Permanente Retirement Plans’ investment committee and the Kaiser Foundation investment committee. He oversaw approximately $78 billion in defined contribution, pension and foundation assets. He managed interest rate and foreign exchange risk for Bank of America’s global proprietary desks in the 1980s, then left for eight years to work as a police detective. In 1994 he returned to Bank of America, where he helped develop equity and fixed income risk models before becoming senior vice president and chief investment officer for Bank of America’s retirement plan investments. Lee served as chief investment officer for the Levi Strauss Foundation and Red Tab Foundation assets as well as the Levi Strauss global pension plans. He is a chartered financial analyst (CFA) and a 2010 graduate of Harvard Business School’s Executive Leadership Program.

Michael G. Trotsky, CFA, is the executive director and chief investment officer of the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management (“PRIM”) board, the entity responsible for investing the $79 billion Massachusetts pension fund, which contains the assets of the Massachusetts Teachers’ and State Employees’ Retirement Systems as well as the assets of approximately 100 participating municipal and county retirement systems. Trotsky’s work at PRIM was preceded by a 25-year career in the private sector, most recently as senior vice president and portfolio manager at PAR Capital Management, a Boston-based absolute return strategy fund. Previously, he was a senior analyst at Greenberg-Summit Partners in Boston and also served as a principal and senior vice president at Independence Investment Associates (a John Hancock subsidiary), also in Boston. Trotsky began his professional career in 1985 as an engineer at Intel Corporation in California. He serves as immediate past chair of the CFA Society Boston as well as previously served as a member of the CFA Institute board of directors and as chair of the CFA Institute’s Asset Manager Code of Professional Conduct Advisory Committee. He currently serves as a governing trustee on the board of trustees at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He is also a member of the Boston Economics Club. Trotsky received a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Moderator

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. He is the chief executive and major shareholder of Conexus Financial, which was established in 2005, and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

The company hosts more than 20 conferences and events globally each year and publishes three digital publications, including the global website and strategy newsletter for global institutional investors Top1000Funds.com, Professional Planner for financial planners, accountants and private bankers in Australia and Investment Magazine for Australian superfunds and institutional investors. One of the company’s signature events is the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium attended by global asset owners and hosted in the Americas and Europe.

Conexus Financial’s events aim 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.

Tate served for seven years on the board of Australia’s most high profile homeless charity, The Wayside Chapel; and he has underwritten the welfare of 60,000 people in 28 villages throughout Uganda via The Hunger Project. In 2021 was appointed as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) for significant service to the community through charitable initiatives.

What does it really mean to achieve a net zero strategy? As more and more investors make pledges for net zero they are tasked with setting a strategy to achieve net-zero. This session looked at the challenges of implementing those goals in portfolios what behaviour changes are needed and how do investors allocate?

Speakers

Diane Griffioen CFA (1971) is, since September 2018 head of investments of ABP, the largest pension fund in the Netherlands. She is responsible for the investment policy that is carried out by our pension provider APG Asset Management in close coordination/consultation with ABP.

In the past, Diane served as managing director at ASN investment fund, managing director at Triodos investment management and head of investments at ING private banking and is a member of the investment committee of the Dutch Central Bank.

Additionally, she fulfills supervisory positions at pension funds Huisartsen en Hivos Triodos Fund and is a member of the investment committee of the Dutch Central Bank.

Diane has a degree in international financial economics, Erasmus program for commissioners and supervisors and is CFA charterholder.

Tom is the Commissioners’ chief investment officer, responsible for oversight of the investment function and management of the multi-asset portfolio. He previously worked as chief investment officer of RMB Asset Management after a number of years at Schroder Investment Management. He started his career at Royal Sun Alliance Investment Management and is an associate member of the CFA Society of the UK.

Moderator

Fiona Reynolds is the chief executive of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), the UN supported organisation, with 4,000 signatories which collectively represent over $100 trillion in assets under management. She is responsible for the PRI’s global operations.
Appointed at the beginning of 2013, Reynolds has 25 years’ experience in the financial services and pension sector. She joined the PRI from the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST), where she spent seven years as the chief executive.
She serves on the board of the UN Global Compact, she chaired of the Financial Services Commission into Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking (The Liechtenstein initiative) and is now a member of the Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) Global Steering Committee. Reynolds is also a member of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), the Global Advisory Council on Stranded Assets at Oxford University, the advisory board for the Green Investment Principles for the Belt and Road, the global steering committee for the Investor Agenda on Climate Action and the steering committee for Climate Action 100+. She is also on the investment committee for Laudes foundation and the advisory board for BASF and the advisory council of Bloomberg Green.
She was named by Barron’s magazine of one of the 20 most influential people in sustainability globally and has twice been named by the Australian Financial Review (AFR) as of one of Australia’s 100 women of influence for her work in financial services and responsible investment.