Gideon Smith: Fundamentals and the golden age for quants

CalPERS, La Caisse raise the bar for active managers

CalPERS may have doubled the fees it pays for active management in public equities, but the alpha it generates has quadrupled, says global equity head Simiso Nzima, who has spent three years pruning a roster of nearly 100 managers down to a tightly scored handful. La Caisse's Mario Therrien describes a parallel discipline, using external managers not just for returns but as a "window to the world" on emerging strategies, from quant investing to AI.