Co chair of global consulting at Russell, Don Ezra, says the progress towards best practice in investment governance is painfully slow. He spoke to Amanda White about why that path is worth enduring and some principles for creating a good governance structure.
The speed with which CalPERS can fulfil its desire to become a risk intelligent organisation has been given a reality check with discussions between the Californian fund and TIAA-CREF revealing it takes two to five years to fully implement an effective enterprise risk-management structure, and importantly a risk intelligent culture in an organisation.
Institutional investors continued to suppress home country biases and globalise equity portfolios during 2009, a year in which risk appetite returned as equity markets rallied and short-dated credit strategies thrived, according to manager search data from Mercer Investment Consulting.
The $35 billion Maryland State Retirement Agency will increase its internal investment team by 25 per cent as it looks to expand its coverage of market activities and take advantage of opportunities in the distressed market.
Mercer Investment Consulting has undertaken a review of global equities and is about to roll out to clients a paper which questions traditional cap-weighted benchmarks.
Mercer has revamped the asset allocation of its largest group of funds and in the process refined the way it classifies types of investments into ‘growth’ and ‘defensive’. The multi-manager has also signaled an evolution towards a ‘risk premia-based’ approach to asset allocation in the future. Greg Bright reports.