Hedge Fund-ing the Pension Deficit
Select hedge funds have provided attractive long-term returns with reduced equity beta and can be integral to pension investment strategies.
June 2016
Insights
The Foundation of Good Governance for Endowments and Investment Committees
To create the conditions for good governance, endowments should assess whether they have in place the appropriate model for portfolio oversight and management, are upholding their fiduciary responsibilities, and are learning about peer best practices in structure, process, policies, and role of the portfolio.
May 2016
Risks and Opportunities From the Changing Climate: Playbook for the Truly Long-Term Investor
Considering climate factors is an economic risk management and opportunity capitalization issue core to prudent investing for the long term. In this paper, we discuss the potential risks that climate change can inflict upon certain sectors and asset classes, outline corresponding strategies to defend against those risks, and review the thematic areas across public and private asset classes to proactively capitalize on the evolving opportunity set within the "resource efficiency" sector.
December 2015
Venture Capital Disrupts Itself: Breaking the Concentration Curse
The widely held belief that 90% of venture industry performance is generated by just the top ten firms is a catchy but unsupported claim that may lead investors to miss attractive opportunities with managers that can provide exposure to substantial value creation.
November 2015
Private Investments: Filling a Pension’s Return Void
Well-diligenced private investments in a skillfully constructed portfolio are important growth drivers that have helped pension funds deliver superior performance and increased the probability of meeting or exceeding long-term required returns.
October 2015
Navigating the Diversified Growth Fund Maze
Diversified growth funds (DGFs) have garnered significant attention and assets—particularly amongst UK defined benefit pension schemes—as a less volatile source of long-term growth. DGFs can be valuable tools for pension portfolio management, but only if trustees understand what they are buying and how it fits into the context of the total portfolio. The simple bifurcation of the available products into traditional and absolute return strategies can be a starting point for trustees to help make sense of the market and set appropriate risk/return expectations across different market environments.
October 2015
Constructing Superior Equity Portfolios
A common perception among investors that employ active equity management is that the “donut” structure is more aggressive, more expensive, and riskier than the “core-satellite” structure because of the donut structure’s heavier reliance on concentrated, high tracking error, high fee managers. The research we present in this report, which examines a 17-year period, calls into question these perceptions. Our analysis suggests that, at a minimum, investors should reassess whether a core-satellite structure is as likely to help them earn their payout as a donut structure.
September 2015
The Forgotten 70%: Strategies for Pension Plans Accruing Benefits
Plans with active participants need a holistic, flexible risk budgeting approach—not a simple glide path.
July 2015