Climate politics: BlackRock hits back at NYC Comptroller

The skirmish between the New York City Comptroller and BlackRock over climate alignment of the city’s public pension funds – a fight worth a $42 billion mandate to BlackRock – highlights the complexity and impracticality of aligning climate expectations, reporting requirements and business imperatives.

Alaska’s APFC mulls the positives of growing its small crypto exposure

The $84 billion Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation is weighing the benefits and risks of increasing its less than 1 per cent allocation to cryptocurrency following positive returns for the sovereign wealth fund. Despite the current policy tailwinds, the investor is wary about the asset class’s liquidity and value drivers. 

Limited alternatives keep global capital anchored to the US

Singapore’s Temasek said while US exceptionalism may be “fraying”, there aren’t many alternative markets that can handle the same volume of global capital. Meanwhile, fellow sovereign fund GIC believes the greenback’s reserve currency status remains solid even though currency swings could spell trouble for foreign investors.

The future is a riskier place than the present

In this regular column for Top1000funds.com, Tim Hodgson of the Thinking Ahead Institute argues that the future is riskier not only because it is uncertain, but because the quantum of risk increases with time. He unpacks what this means for investors’ risk analysis and the term ‘risk premium’. 

TPA just a new acronym for ‘common sense’: Pennsylvania PSERS CIO

As CalPERS becomes the first US pension fund to adopt a total portfolio approach, Ben Cotton, CIO of $80 billion Pennsylvania PSERS suggests TPA is just another acronym for something investors should already be doing: making decisions for what is best for the whole portfolio.