The news that private equity investment in the U.S. fell by almost 50% to $41 billion in the second quarter, compared to investments totaling $80 billion in Q2 2017, may have startled some market observers, who had watched the segment hit record heights in 2017. But keen observers remain unfazed, confident that investors will soon be …
There is little uniformity in the use of benchmarks for different asset classes among public pension plans, according to a new report from the Center for State and Local Government Excellence (SLGE) and the Boston College Center for Retirement Research (CRR). Given that pension plans pay their asset managers based on the expectation that they will beat …
While a number of New England pension funds, which aggregate some $2.5 billion in assets under management across 20 open and 14 closed plans, remain critically underfunded, one fund has turned around its misfortune using conservative investment strategies. Others, such as the 24.2%-funded Central Falls, Rhode Island police and fire pensions, are still in rough …
The Stamford Police Pension Board has gradually shifted its $37 million traditional fixed-income allocation to multi-strategy-securitized credit and hedge funds. The move is continuing to pay off. On a year-to-date basis, through March 31, Stamford pension’s securitized credit exposure was up 8.5%, while its standard fixed income index, the BloombergBarclays US Aggregate Index was down …
Cambridge Associates has hired Jasmine Richards as senior investment director, manager diversity, based in the firm’s Boston headquarters. Richards joined the consultancy to lead its ongoing initiatives to identify and research institutional investment managers in all public and private asset classes that have diverse owners or leaders, including women and people of color. The goal is to increase …
Moves by public pension funds this year to entrust outsourced chief investment officers (OCIOs) with discretionary oversight of substantial portions of their portfolios have industry insiders asking: Have OCIOs finally cracked the code to access public pension plan accounts? In particular, news in the summer that the $18.4 billion Illinois State Board of Investment (ISBI) voted to …
Beth Richtman, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s (CalPERS) first managing investment director of its sustainable investment program, on July 16, delivered her first presentation to the system’s board of trustees, outlining her vision and initial steps for implementing ESG principles across the pension fund’s portfolio. She said in the presentation that her overriding vision …
Europe has, for some time, been the sweet spot for institutional investors seeking infrastructure exposure, but with so many investors chasing the same deals, supply-demand pressures have depressed returns in the asset class there. As such, some market participants are questioning why more North American institutional investment officers aren’t seeking newer or less-trodden paths to …
Institutional investors are looking for opportunities to invest in renewable energy, and the markets have taken note. In fact, more than half (54%) of the number of infrastructure deals completed in Q2 2018 were for renewable energy assets, while energy assets and utilities assets each accounted for 11% of all infrastructure deals, according to a …
The options strategy implemented by Vijoy Chattergy, the former chief investment officer of the $17 billion Honolulu-based Employees’ Retirement System of the State of Hawaii (HIERS), which targets equity like returns with 2/3 the volatility of equities over a full market cycle, is still performing well, even after his departure. “Today the strategy remains fully collateralized, and …
