The $37 billion United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund increased its allocation to equities by 4 per cent in the past quarter, at the expense of real estate and bonds, and is now overweight the asset class, as it continues to support active management.
About half of the $201 billion in assets managed by CalPERS is available to liquidate within 90 days according to a new total fund liquidity assessment to be presented to the investment committee as part of the quarterly risk management update, which also shows the fund to have a total leverage of 19 per cent, or $37 billion.
Over the next few years the €180 billion ABP will invest 2 per cent of capital to innovative assets and strategies under the broad direction of innovation. One such investment has been an allocation to the incubator company, IMQubator, which invests in investment managers with innovative ideas and strategies. Amanda White spoke with chief investment officer of IMQubator, Rikard Lundgren, about supporting managers in the search for alpha and how pension funds can benefit.
Bigger appetites for absolute return strategies, new attitudes to risk and governance, and the onset of major regulation – these were the forces for change identified in Watson Wyatt’s 2008 study, Defining Moments. But the social fallout from the financial crisis has sparked another phenomenon that could heavily impact institutional investors, according to Tim Hodgson senior investment consultant and founding member of the Thinking Ahead Group, who co-authored the paper. He spoke with Simon Mumme.
The $9.3 billion Los Angeles City Employees Retirement System will tilt its asset allocation to hedge against inflation and will discuss altering its investment policy to explicitly address inflation at each annual asset allocation review.
A number of new research articles have deunked two universally held beliefs in the investment industry, that shares are a good long-term bet and that economic growth is good for equities. Dr Arjuna Sittampalam, Research Associate with the EDHEC-Risk Institute and editor, Investment Management Review, examines the research.