In this Fiduciary Investors Series podcast Amanda White speaks to Simon Pilcher the chief executive of USS Investment Management, which manages assets for USS, the largest private pension scheme in the UK about the complexity of a sustainable strategy – including divestment and manager expectations – as well as the opportunistic investments the fund has made in private assets and credit.
About Simon Pilcher
Simon Pilcher was appointed the chief executive of USS Investment Management in October 2019. He started his career in asset management in 1987 at Morgan Grenfell before moving to Prudential in 1998, a year before it acquired M&G Investments. At M&G Prudential, he led the fixed income and alternatives businesses for two decades before being asked to become chair of real estate with a combined team of over 500 employees and around £160 billion in assets. He was also a member of the executive leadership team.
During his tenure at M&G Prudential, he championed innovation and pioneered new products in Europe, for example: leveraged finance, infrastructure private equity, commercial mortgage lending and, more recently, specialty finance and impact investing.
About Amanda White
Amanda White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events. In addition to being the editor of Top1000funds.com, she is responsible for directing the global bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts. She holds a Bachelor of Economics and a Masters of Art in Journalism and has been an investment journalist for more than 25 years. She is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry.
What is the Fiduciary Investors series?
The COVID-19 global health and economic crisis has highlighted the need for leadership and capital to be urgently targeted towards the vulnerabilities in the global economy.
Through conversations with academics and asset owners, the Fiduciary Investors Podcast Series is a forward looking examination of the changing dynamics in the global economy, what a sustainable recovery looks like and how investors are positioning their portfolios.
The much-loved events, the Fiduciary Investors Symposiums, act as an advocate for fiduciary capitalism and the power of asset owners to change the nature of the investment industry, including addressing principal/agent and fee problems, stabilising financial markets, and directing capital for the betterment of society and the environment. Like the event series, the podcast series, tackles the challenges long-term investors face in an environment of disruption, and asks investors to think differently about how they make decisions and allocate capital.
