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Investor Profile

CERN fund: the collision of investment ideas?

Its core business involves expanding the realm of science by beaming particles close to the speed of light and it invented the web – as we know it – as a nice little side project. You would perhaps then expect the CHF 3.6-billion ($3.9-billion) pension fund of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, to […]
Dan BillinghamApril 19, 2013
Asset Allocation

Who should co-invest in private equity?

Some pension funds have hit on a lucrative strategy to extract more value from their private equity portfolios. The £34-billion ($51.6-billion) Universities Superannuation Scheme, the United Kingdom’s second biggest pension fund for university and higher education staff, is expanding a private equity co-investment strategy begun in 2008. It’s a model whereby schemes portion some investment […]
Sarah RundellMarch 22, 2013
Investor Profile

Billion-dollar beef-up at Barclays’ OPAM

If Tony Broccardo, head of Oak Pensions Asset Management, the investment arm of the £23-billion ($35.6-billion) pension fund for employees of London-headquartered bank, Barclays, wasn’t a fund manager he would have been an architect. But Broccardo has applied similar skills of stress testing, planning and making something structurally secure to the return-seeking fund, one of […]
Sarah RundellFebruary 20, 2013
Investor Profile

Environment Agency fund: a natural progression

It’s hardly surprising that a pension fund for employees working for an organisation charged with reducing climate change and its consequences invests according to strict green criteria. Yet the investment strategy of the United Kingdom’s £2.1-billion ($3.29 billion) Environment Agency Pension Fund (EAPF) definitely has the capacity to surprise. The EAPF posted a total return […]
Sarah RundellFebruary 6, 2013
Investor Profile

Methodist morality delivers mainstream returns

When John Wesley, the 18th century Anglican cleric, preached that business practices should not harm one’s neighbour, he never imagined that his principles would guide the global investment strategy of an $18.4-billion pension fund. Today, the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits of the United Methodist Church, based in Chicago, ranks as one of […]
Richard TomlinsonFebruary 1, 2013
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