Investment appetite among European institutions rebounded in 2009, with Mercer Investment Consulting identifying a surge in clients’ demands for new global fixed income, global equity and specialist credit exposures. Andy Barber, global head of manager research at Mercer, tells Simon Mumme about the investment themes driving these searches, and the evident decline of the ‘home country bias’ among UK institutions.
The $28 billion Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System is a late entrant into private equity with its debut $25 million allocation to the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund X, occurring at the same time the fund has cut its allocation to short term assets by 5 per cent.
The $37 billion United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund increased its allocation to equities by 4 per cent in the past quarter, at the expense of real estate and bonds, and is now overweight the asset class, as it continues to support active management.
About half of the $201 billion in assets managed by CalPERS is available to liquidate within 90 days according to a new total fund liquidity assessment to be presented to the investment committee as part of the quarterly risk management update, which also shows the fund to have a total leverage of 19 per cent, or $37 billion.
Over the next few years the €180 billion ABP will invest 2 per cent of capital to innovative assets and strategies under the broad direction of innovation. One such investment has been an allocation to the incubator company, IMQubator, which invests in investment managers with innovative ideas and strategies. Amanda White spoke with chief investment officer of IMQubator, Rikard Lundgren, about supporting managers in the search for alpha and how pension funds can benefit.
Bigger appetites for absolute return strategies, new attitudes to risk and governance, and the onset of major regulation – these were the forces for change identified in Watson Wyatt’s 2008 study, Defining Moments. But the social fallout from the financial crisis has sparked another phenomenon that could heavily impact institutional investors, according to Tim Hodgson senior investment consultant and founding member of the Thinking Ahead Group, who co-authored the paper. He spoke with Simon Mumme.