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Featured Story
APAC’s mega trends: The investors positioning for the future
APAC is positioned to benefit from some of the most exciting global trends that offer unparalleled investment opportunities. Previous features in this series have focused on the region’s diversification benefits, short-term opportunities, and why active strategies work best. Buckle up for the long-term view.
FIS Oxford 2024
UK pension funds rue pressure to focus on the short term and group think
A group of investors at FIS Oxford reflect on the pressure to invest in the short term and the dangers of group think. Elsewhere they question if the private sector has capacity to find solutions to the climate emergency
FIS Oxford 2024
CPP Investments talks tech: Deployment not innovation; bullish on AI
The evolution, thinking and implementation of technology behind the investment process is a key focus for Jon Webster, CPP Investments chief operating officer. He explains how the fund sees technology as value enhancing, rather than as a cost.
FIS Oxford 2024
Reckoning on growth: Why tech offers the solution
Daniel Susskind, author of "Growth: A Reckoning" argues that leaning into new technology will allow global economic growth without gobbling up the earth's finite resources.
FIS Oxford 2024
SWIB develops model to highlight inflation risk
Using a factor model comprising real rates, inflation, growth and liquidity the State of Wisconsin Investment Board has "swapped binoculars for sunglasses" to see a new picture that effectively highlights inflation risk.
FIS Oxford 2024
DC behemoths open up on cultural and investment growth
Nest and AustralianSuper, the largest defined contribution trust funds in their respective countries, face similar challenges related to growth. The Fiduciary Investors Symposium at the University of Oxford heard how the funds are leaning into their growth challenges from a cultural and investment perspective.
FIS Oxford 2024
Why the impact of technology is limited only by the laws of physics
The potential of technology is constrained only by the laws of physics, whether classical or, increasingly, quantum. As the power of technology increases it allows us to understand the world in a lot more detail – including why the current path to net-zero isn’t going to work.
FIS Oxford 2024
Asset owners proving trust goes hand-in-hand with transparency
Transparency is key to building trust according to executives at Norges Bank and the United Nations Staff Pension Fund. They discussed the benefits, and limitations of transparency at the Fiduciary Investors Symposium at the University of Oxford.
Investor Profile
How an iterative strategy shapes success at Baylor university endowment
David Morehead, chief investment officer of Baylor University endowment in Texas explains why he's concerned about too much diversification and why the rewards of interest rate cuts will be most keenly felt in small cap equities.
Opinion
Piecing together the impact investing puzzle
Ben Thornley, co-founder at Tideline, looks at how value creation practices bring a manager’s impact credentials into sharper focus, the strong positive correlation between impact and financial performance, and the role of allocators in incentivizing and enabling managers to deliver impact value.
Decisions to Enable Net Zero Investing
The complexity, limitation, evolution and liberation of climate benchmarks
Benchmarks are highlighted in the recent CFA Institute paper as among the historical norms that make investing in climate challenging. MSCI Institute’s Linda-Eling Lee talks about the complexities and evolution of climate benchmarks including the use of balanced scorecard-toolkits that are improving the technology.
Sustainability
How to nature proof portfolios
Natural capital holds more risk and opportunity than climate change, but where do investors start? Top1000funds.com takes a deep dive exploring the investors that are making inroads to nature-proofing their portfolios.
Sustainability
Why patient capital will be rewarded for investing in timberland
The fundamentals that underpin timberland, and their strategic role on the path to net zero, will reward consistent investment in productive natural capital. Aleksi Ehtee, timberland team lead, Church Commissioners for England explains why forestry is a real opportunity for patient capital to tap into favourable long-term supply-demand dynamics.
Private Equity
Finland’s VER reflects on how to enliven European venture capital
Statistics show that Europe outperforms the United States when it comes to 10-year venture capital returns, but European investors struggle to access the market. Finnish State Fund VER's CEO Timo Löyttyniemi suggests how the market could develop.
Investor Profile
Church Commissioners: Managing historic real assets for the future
The jewel in the crown of the Church Commissioners’ portfolio, the London-based asset manager for the historic assets of the Church of England, is its allocation to real assets, which contributes to returns used to support the work and specific needs of the church, alongside clergy pensions.
Featured Story
How Brightwell combines external credit managers and in-house LDI
Brightwell, asset manager for the BT Pension Scheme, explains why it manages its liability-driven investment strategy in-house but has turned to external managers in its cash flow-driven strategy.
Investor Profile
ATP returns hit again by large allocation to bonds
The $102 billion Danish pension fund, ATP, returned just 3 per cent in its return-seeking allocation in the first half of this year, buoyed by its foreign and Danish equity portfolios but pulled down by rising interest rates negatively impacting the large allocation to bonds.
FIS Stanford 2018
FIS Stanford Photo Gallery
View photos from the 2018 Fiduciary Investors Symposium, held at Stanford University, United States.
FIS Stanford 2018
China’s enticing, challenging market
Inefficient markets and an explosion of technological innovation fuelled by Millennial consumers make China a tantalising prospect but accessing strong returns there isn’t as simple as it looks.
FIS Stanford 2018
Protecting human capital helps everyone
Investors have plenty to gain from helping to protect human rights in supply chains and managing the human costs during technological disruption and the transition to a low-carbon economy.
FIS Stanford 2018
How to follow megatrends to success
The big themes that will fuel growth in coming decades are interconnected and subject to change. An expert panel gave advice on riding societal change to outperformance.
FIS Stanford 2018
How the active complements the passive
Investors discuss the various ways that two styles often presented as if they are enemies in fact work hand in hand across portfolios to produce returns.
Asset Allocation
New York City’s TRS: Junk rallies make active management hard
At the October investment committee meeting for the Teachers Retirement System of the City of New York, TRS' Tax Deferred Annuity Programme trustees heard how lower quality stocks are outperforming the broad market in what is commonly referred to as a “junk rally.”
Asset Allocation
Behind Future Fund’s $70bn inflation-related portfolio shift
In the past two years, the Future Fund has made around $70 billion worth of changes in the portfolio that can be traced back to stubbornly high inflation. Its director of research and insights, Craig Thorburn, outlined how asset allocation around currencies, alternatives and bonds are all looking different.
Featured Story
Texas Teachers marks highest ever quarterly return
Texas Teachers records the highest quarterly return in its 85-year history – 333 basis points of alpha – with US and Indian equities fuelling the excess return. The fund has made a number of recent changes to the portfolio including removing China and reducing allocations to private equity.
Featured Story
Better performance and alignment of purpose: The benefits of TPA
A total portfolio approach aligns investment implementation with the purpose of being a fiduciary, rather than short term or relative performance. Not only that, there is huge upside performance from the approach, the source of which is not what you might think according to Sue Brake.
Investor Profile
USS swings into surplus but flags re-think after Thames losses
USS says losses in Thames Water have led to deep reflection on how it will invest in regulated assets in the future, flagging the need for consistent regulation to support pension fund investment. As the fund celebrates its 50th year it records a surplus for the first time since 2008.
Strategy
UK’s transition-focused SWF gets green light
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves didn’t waste any time approving the UK’s new SWF aimed at funding the energy transition. As it begins to lay down structure and governance frameworks critics point to the challenges of bringing projects to a level where they are investable.
Investor Profile
Brunel uses AI in stewardship and doubles down on manager misalignment
Brunel Pension Partnership has introduced AI in its stewardship processes, and is working with other asset owners to put more pressure on asset managers to align with its climate demands.
Investor Profile
Frampton shows the way as APFC turns to China, private equity
Opportunity in China, risk aversion in fixed income as spreads remain tight, and turning up the volume in private equity: Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation's Marcus Frampton talks latest strategy at the $82 billion fund.