Alaska continues self assessment with special meeting

The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation Board of Trustees has called a special meeting for October 15, to discuss among other things the performance of the executive director and the fund’s securities lending agenda.

This unscheduled, special meeting will be open to the public and will also discuss the 2011 financial year budget.

It follows close on the heels of the September 25 board meeting where chief investment officer, Jeff Scott, presented a draft framework of the investment policy, combining all of the fund’s policies into a single document clearly delineating who is responsible for each task and the oversight of each task.

The board also reviewed the fund’s recently introduced risk assessment tools as part of its annual meeting, where Max Giolitti, head of risk management presented key elements of the risk dashboard which among other things allows staff and trustees to better evaluate the fund’s investment risk.

The new tools will allow the fund to assess risk in areas beyond volatility, such as liquidity risk, currency risk and company exposure.

The fund, which had assets of $32.5 billion at the end of August, recently introduced a new way of classifying its investments, such that assets are allocated according to how investments respond to economic conditions and their purpose in the portfolio.

Where previously the fund allocated according to traditional asset classes, the new allocation from July is a 53 per cent allocation to company exposures; 21 per cent to special opportunities; 18 per cent to real assets; 6 per cent to interest rates, and the cash allocation.