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Featured Story
Canada’s BCI plans to double allocation to private debt
British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, BCi, the $200 billion asset manager for around 30 Canadian pension funds and insurers, is planning to double its private debt allocation. Sarah Rundell spoke to Daniel Garant about the shifts in the portfolio and the focus on active management.
Sustainability
Energy crisis turns investors off prescriptive shareholder resolutions
In a recent stewardship update, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, warned that it will support fewer shareholder resolutions on climate change this year because they have become too extreme and prescriptive.
Sustainability in Practice
Lessons from the mining sector: Engage with the issue, not the company
The Church of England Pensions Board led change in the mining industry by engaging with the issue rather than individual companies. The process led to the introduction of new standards on tailings dams.
Sustainability in Practice
Investors need to wake up to the value of natural capital
Investors have a key role to play in halting biodiversity loss but biodiversity literacy in the finance and business world is poor: the fog comes down and the conversation gets stuck.
Sustainability in Practice
The business as usual oil groups betting against Paris
Oil and gas companies that are pursuing a growth strategy are betting against Paris. These projects will be stranded; they will destroy investor value and will take the world over emissions targets.
Fiduciary Investors Series
Valuation and risk as the rhetoric-action gap on climate mitigation closes
In this live recording from Sustainability in Practice, hosted by Top1000funds.com at Cambridge University in April 2022, Professor Julian Allwood speaks with Colin Tate.
Fiduciary Investors Series
Special guest speaker: Professor Sir David King
In this live recording from Sustainability in Practice, hosted by Top1000funds.com at Cambridge University in April 2022, Professor Sir David King speaks with Amanda White.
Risk
Why liquidity management will be harder in a post-Covid-19 world
CIOs need more sophisticated tools to manage liquidity in a post-COVID world, experts say, now that the DC retirement landscape has been permanently changed following the precedent of early release schemes.
Sustainability in Practice
PGGM’s journey to invest for risk, return and impact
The €268 billion Dutch pension provider PGGM is leading its global peers when it comes to shaping 3D portfolios based around risk, return and impact. Piet Klop, head of responsible investment discusses the challenges of investing for outcomes.
Sustainability in Practice
Boost to legal infrastructure behind sustainable investment
Investing for sustainability impact is relevant for all investors and they should consider doing so where it can help meet their financial objectives. So argues a recent report, reflecting the growing legal infrastructure supporting sustainable investment. But there are still a few legal pinch points.
Sustainability in Practice
Sir David King: The role of technology in creating a manageable future
Net zero objectives are not enough according to Professor Sir David King, founder and chair, Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University and UK government chief scientific advisor from 2000 to 2007 who urged investors to stop using fossil fuels which he says equates to borrowing from the future.
Sustainability in Practice
CPP drives new corporate framework for emission abatement
CPP Investments’ proposal for projecting the capacity of companies to abate greenhouse gas emissions can help corporate boards and executives better understand the least and most polluting elements of their business, and steer investor capital to industries with lower emissions, said Richard Manley, managing director, head of sustainable investing, CPP.
Sustainability in Practice
Net zero alignment: Assign portfolio managers strict carbon budgets
A new paper outlines how investors can align their portfolio to science-based carbon budgets consistent with 1.5 degrees of warming.
Sustainability in Practice
Infrastructure investors hunt decarbonisation pathways
Investors discuss the importance of being able to decarbonise infrastructure assets over the long-term. It's leading to lacklustre appetite for investments that can't - like airports.
Infrastructure
Performance variation impacts treatment of infrastructure: PGIM
Historical performance and cash flow characteristics differ enormously among infrastructure asset sectors, and even between assets of the same sector, says the vice president of PGIM IAS’ private assets research program. But scarcity of data makes infrastructure performance notoriously hard to study.
Investor Profile
Private equity boom also holds challenges for Oregon
It's been a white hot year for private equity but challenges in the asset class continue for investors, like the impact on total asset allocation given massive appreciations in portfolio values, plus slow distributions from GPs. We look at Oregon Public Employee Retirement Fund’s large private equity portfolio.
Asset Allocation
SWFs invest record amounts in VC
SWFs invested record amounts into venture capital last year with VC allocations ballooning. Overall assets were boosted by four new SWFs: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cape Verde and Rio de Janeiro. While Israel, Namibia, Bahamas and Mozambique will all launch this year.
Stanford 2018
FIS Stanford Photo Gallery
View photos from the 2018 Fiduciary Investors Symposium, held at Stanford University, United States.
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.
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.
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.
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
The sudden death and strange afterlife of globalisation
Daniel Celeghin, managing partner at INEFI, argues globalisation is not dead but has morphed so that post-2022 globalisation is a series of deeply rooted local investments that together result in a global portfolio.
Research
The five characteristics of a future portfolio: CAIA
The traditional 60/40 portfolio allocation is no longer enough. The opportunity for alpha is not gone, but the low-hanging fruit has long been harvested, and the path toward higher absolute returns has gotten far more nuanced according to a new report from the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA)
Featured Story
Asset owners fear rising inflation and falling equity valuations
The 2022 annual CIO Sentiment Survey, a collaboration between Top1000funds.com and CaseyQuirk, finds asset owners most concerned about equity valuations and inflation. After three years of fee rises, asset owners are paying less for investments while CIOs in 2022 are also working with a smaller manager roster.
Asset Allocation
Beyond traditional portfolio construction: incorporating uncertainty
Incorporating uncertainty into the asset allocation process is a complicated but essential ingredient of building portfolio resilience, something investors are valuing more than ever in an environment where inflation, geopolitical and climate risks dominate. GIC and BlackRock have both developed asset allocation frameworks that incorporate investors’ aversion for uncertainty.
Investor Profile
Future Fund sceptical on correlations
The Future Fund, Australia’s A$226 billion sovereign wealth fund, has embarked on an ambitious project instigated during the crisis which includes re-examining its investment assumptions, risk tolerance and the way it allocates capital. Amanda White talks to the fund’s new CIO, Sue Brake about where the fund will be allocating in the future including alternatives and active management.
Investor Profile
The impact of technology on investments
Harshal Chaudhari recently sidestepped from his role as company-wide CIO at IBM, looking after $150 billion in pension assets, to a new role as the tech giant’s chief analytics officer. He spoke to Top1000Funds about the strategy he ran at the pension fund, his wider thoughts on the global economy and the impact of technology on the investment world.
Risk
Risk aversion matters: life-cycle design
A key issue in life-cycle fund design is setting the right ‘glide path’ for switching from growth to defensive assets over time. As it turns out, risk aversion is far more important than pension fund balance. New research raises a note of caution over offering a single, one-size-fits-all life-cycle fund.
Strategy
Tough times greet new CalPERS CIO
Ben Meng isn’t easing into his role. The new CIO of CalPERS faces three new board members, a stressed private equity program and executive turnover, all under the pressure of a 70 per cent funded status and a maturing membership at the $340 billion fund.