March 16, 2020—Amid a turbulent global and market environment, we remain committed to our clients and colleagues.
Endowments & Foundations
We have worked with endowments and foundations for more than 40 years, and we’re proud to be associated with so many institutions that are making the world a better place.
We understand the investment challenges non-profit investors face. We also believe that every institution is different. That’s why our investment teams work to understand each client’s needs and to build a customized portfolio, aligning the portfolio with each client’s long-term investment objectives, risk tolerances, liquidity needs, and other enterprise considerations.
We have experienced investors operating in key financial hubs around the world to source and evaluate opportunities — including many types of alternative assets — with the goal of delivering the best investment ideas to our clients. We also leverage our market presence and scale to negotiate favorable terms and fees with managers, often creating a net reduction in overall fees paid. To increase alignment with our clients, we do not offer our own proprietary off-the-shelf investment products or accept payments by managers for recommending their products.
Our Latest Insights
The “secret sauce” to long-term investment success is, in most cases, the governance that guides and oversees the investment program. In this series, we discuss the roles and responsibilities of governance; highlight the steps to build a diverse and collaborative committee, and outline the culture of a well-functioning committee.
Investors are now grappling with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has sent global equities into bear market territory as the threat of a severe recession weighs on the global economy. These are challenging, uncertain times for equity markets. As investors work to ensure their portfolios will be robust through this downturn and are positioned for the eventual rebound, we offer a review of the critical benefits of global equity diversification and examine considerations related to home bias, rebalancing strategies, and currency impacts.
Nominal high-quality sovereign bond yields throughout developed markets have plummeted toward zero, increasing the likelihood that most developed markets may soon need to contend with negative yields, and leading investors to question whether high-quality sovereign bonds are still the best form of insurance. In light of these developments, we examine the historical safe-haven characteristics of high-quality sovereign bonds and assesses whether they remain a viable safe-haven asset.
In periods of market stress, it can be difficult to rebalance, much less overweight risky assets like equities. In this paper, we review our approach using multiple lenses: magnitude and duration of drawdowns relative to history, cheapness of valuations, and presence of pre-conditions for markets to begin their ascent. Such an approach can help investors tune out the emotion and dial in on the hard data and most probable outcomes even in the face of great uncertainty. While opportunities are developing across many markets, investors should hold off on broad overweights to risky assets at this time.
For non-profit institutions, the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 virus, and the speed by which these disruptions have materialized, create a perfect financial storm.
March 23, 2020— As we write in March 2020, COVID-19 is spreading across much of the world, undercutting economic activity. While how this situation will unfold is not entirely clear, we have long believed that the best way to guard against future uncertainty is to have a well-constructed portfolio. One key component in that is understanding the relationship between asset prices and inflation.
