Ajay Ahuja is an investment manager within the in house executive team of the BBC Pensions Trust, which manages £12.5 billion ($18.5 billion) of assets. He is responsible for managing the pension scheme’s growth portfolio.
Ahuja joined the BBC Pension Trust in 2009. Prior to this he was a sell-side equity research analyst at Lehman Brothers. He holds a BSci (Hons) in Mathematics with Management Studies from University College London. He has been a CFA charterholder since 2008.
Monday 4:00pm Do hedge funds make sense for institutional portfolios?
Myles Allen is Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford and Head of the Climate Dynamics Group in the University's Department of Physics. His research focuses on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and risks of extreme weather and in quantifying their implications for long-range climate forecasts.
Allen has served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as Lead Author on Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes for the 3rd Assessment in 2001 and as Review Editor on Global Climate Projections for the 4th Assessment in 2007.
He proposed the use of Probabilistic Event Attribution to quantify the contribution of human and other external influences on climate to specific individual weather events and leads the www.climateprediction.net project, using distributed computing to run the world’s largest ensemble climate modelling experiments.
Tuesday 1:40pm The science of climate change and the impact on asset owners
Jane Ambachtsheer is a partner at Mercer Investments and head of its global responsible investment business. She advises investors in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Ambachtsheer is currently a member of the Ontario Securities Commission’s (OSC) Investor Advisory Panel and the Advisory Committee of the Carbon Disclosure Project for the Americas. An Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto, she teaches a graduate course on responsible investment. She holds a Bachelor of Economics and English literature with honours from York University and a Master of Social Science from the University of Amsterdam. Prior to joining Mercer, she worked for CEM Benchmarking, in Amsterdam and Toronto.
Tuesday 2:00pm Case studies: How investors are tackling climate change
Keith Ambachtsheer has been a participant in the pensions and investments industry since 1969. He founded his own firm KPA Advisory Services in 1985. Through it, he provides strategic advice to a global clientele in person, and through the monthly Ambachtsheer Letter. He is the author of three best-selling books, and has been a regular contributor to industry publications since the 1970s. He is the publisher and editor of the new Rotman International Journal of Pension Management, which launched in October 2008.
In 1991, Ambachtsheer co-founded CEM Benchmarking which benchmarks the organisational performance of some 400 major pension funds around the world. In 2005, he played a major role in founding the Rotman International Centre for Pension Management (Rotman ICPM). He was appointed director of Rotman ICPM and Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He was appointed director emeritus in 2014.
At the start of 2011, he was appointed academic director of the Rotman-ICPM Board Effectiveness Program for Pension Funds and Other Long-Horizon Investment Institutions. He has personal governance experience as a member of two corporate boards, and has served as board chair of a major medical foundation.
His research, writing and advice have influenced pension and endowment design, policy, and organizational structure in Canada and elsewhere. He has won major awards, including CFA Institute’s Award for Professional Excellence in 2011 for “exemplary achievement, excellence of practice, and true leadership”, and the EBRI Lillywhite Award in 2010, given in recognition of outstanding lifetime contributions to Americans’ economic security. In July of 2009 Ambachtsheer was awarded James Vertin Award from the CFA Institute for his contributions “of enduring value” to investment theory and practice. In 2007, he was honoured with the Outstanding Industry Contribution Award by Investments and Pensions Europe. In 2003, he was named ‘One of the 30 Most Influential People in Pensions and Investments’ by Pensions and Investments in the USA. In 2013, aiCIO named him one of the globe’s “10 most influential academics in institutional investing”, and the globe’s #1 “knowledge broker” in institutional investing in 2014.
Tuesday 8:30am Governance on steroids
Andrew Ang is the Ann F. Kaplan Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. His research spans bond markets, equities, asset management and portfolio allocation, and alternative investments. Ang received a Bachelor of Economics with First Class Honours from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a Masters of Statistics and PhD in Finance from Stanford University. Hiss recent book, Asset Management: A Systematic Approach to Factor Investing published by Oxford University Press in 2014, is a comprehensive guide showing how factor risk premiums can be harvested in portfolio design and incorporated in all aspects of investment management.
Monday 2:30pm A systemic approach to factor investing
Tony Broccardo is the chief executive of Oak Pension Asset Management Limited which is the in-house asset manager for the Barclays pension fund; and is the chief investment officer of the Barclays Pension Fund.
This circa £25 billion ($37 billion) fund is highly diversified and global. Broccado’s team is responsible for the asset allocation process, investment management, implementation and risk budgeting of the fund. The fund utilises a significant number of external asset class specialists, with 30 per cent of assets under management invested in alternatives.
His previous experience includes being an executive director and chief investment officer for F&C Asset Management PLC, and as a global partner and institutional chief investment officer for INVESCO Asset Management Inc. In both roles, over a period of 15 years, he chaired the global asset allocation committee.
Broccardo has a MA in Finance and Investment from Exeter University, where he is a Fellow and lecturer in Investment and a member of the Business School Advisory Board.
Monday 2:30pm A systemic approach to factor investing
Professor Gordon L Clark is director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment with cross-appointments in the Saïd Business School and the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford University. He holds a Professorial Fellowship at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He is also the Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Monash University's Faculty of Business and Economics (Melbourne) and a Visiting Professor at Stanford University. An economic geographer, his academic interests centre on the responsibilities and behaviour of investors as regards long-term sustainable investment.
Monday 9:00am Welcome address
Monday 9:30am The global macro-economic environment and implications for investors and policy makers
Tuesday 8:30am Governance on steroids
Deb Clarke is Mercer’s global head of investment research, which includes responsibility for manager research and strategic research. Based in London, she manages a group of more than 100 asset class specialists across alternatives, fixed income, equities and real estate. She also oversees the teams responsible for strategic asset allocation, dynamic asset allocation, strategic research and responsible investing. These teams work together to support Mercer’s full range of client solutions from advisory to fiduciary management.
Clarke was previously the global leader of Mercer's equity boutique, specialising in researching global and global emerging market equity managers. She is chair of Mercer's global policy committee and a member of the mainstream assets investment committee.
Clarke joined Mercer in November 2005 from Watson Wyatt, where she was a senior investment consultant advising a range of clients and researching Asian and emerging market equity managers. Prior to this, she was a fund manager for 20 years, most recently working for Friends Ivory & Sime as head of equities.
She has a BA (Hons) in business studies from Plymouth University and is an Associate of the Society of Investment Professionals.
Tuesday 4:00pm The future of institutional investment – part two
Thomas Clarke is partner and portfolio manager on the dynamic allocation strategies team. Prior to joining William Blair in 2011, he was a member of Singer Partners' investment team with special focus on currency strategy.
He is the former head of currency analysis and strategy, and managing director at UBS where he was responsible for UBS Global Asset Management’s global currency investment capability. His roles included setting currency strategies for global macro client portfolios, global and international equity, fixed income, multi-asset and balanced portfolios. He was also responsible for the development and management of the currency analysis process.
Clarke was a member of the global asset allocation and currency committee, and the UK investment committee. Prior to joining UBS Global Asset Management in 2000, Clarke was head of currency for Rothschild Asset Management where he spent 10 years as part of the fixed income and currency group. He holds the Institute for Investment Management and Research qualification, as well as a BSc from University of Manchester (UK).
Monday 1:30pm Macro diversification – how investors can diversify risk
David Cooper is responsible for driving the expansion of IFM’s infrastructure debt investment capabilities into the UK and Europe. He is also charged with sourcing infrastructure debt deals in Europe and conducting credit analysis of prospective investments, as well as managing and marketing IFM’s capability in this speciality. Cooper has 18 years experience in banking focussed on project finance, infrastructure debt and structured credit. He joined IFM from Barclays, where he was head of infrastructure and structured project finance for the corporate bank. Cooper began his banking career with RBS, where he focused on structured and public sector finance globally, then moved to HBOS plc. At HBOS, he worked in the origination team of the infrastructure finance unit, where he was responsible for sourcing and executing senior debt, mezzanine and equity in the PPP, transportation and energy sectors.
Tuesday 12:00pm Infrastructure best practice
Mark Damazer became head of St Peter’s College in October 2010.
He studied history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (1974-77) before spending two years in the USA – at Harvard and then on Capitol Hill where he worked for Senator Paul Tsongas (Massachusetts).
Damazer began his career as a trainee at ITN (ITV News). For more than 25 years he was at the BBC ending as Controller of Radio 4 and Radio 7 for six years from September 2004.
Before that he spent more than 20 years in the news division - as a producer on the 6 O'Clock TV News and Newsnight and subsequently editor of the 9 O'Clock TV News, editor of TV news program, head of current affairs, head of Westminster and deputy director, BBC News.
For four years he was international vice chairman of the International Press Institute (www.freemedia.at). He was also a trustee of Mental Health Media and an external member of the board for the Centre for Contemporary British History (www.ccbh.ac.uk).
He “suffers the misfortunes” of Tottenham Hotspur and is keen on opera, gardening and Italian painting.
Monday 6:30pm Conference dinner
Raffaele Della Croce is an Italian national, lead manager for the OECD project “Institutional Investors and Long Term Investment”, in the financial affairs division of the OECD. The project aims to facilitate long-term investment by investors such as pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds, addressing both potential regulatory obstacles and market failures. Based on research produced for this project the OECD is contributing to the policy discussions at the level of G20, Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the European Commission, in particular through the new G20/OECD Taskforce on Institutional Investors and Long Term Financing.
As part of the OECD Futures Programme he has also worked on the project “Transcontinental Infrastructure Needs to 2030/50” in the Advisory Unity to the Secretary General. Prior to joining the OECD in 2010, he worked in the financial industry for eight years, mainly with Ernst & Young and Moody’s Investors Services, in London. As part of international teams advising governments or private consortia, he has been involved in the analysis, structuring and negotiation of the largest transactions in the utilities and infrastructure sectors in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Della Croce also serves on the advisory committee of the OECD Provident Fund. He was educated at University La Sapienza in Rome and Columbia University in New York.
Tuesday 12:00pm Infrastructure best practice
Magnus Eriksson born 1959, is deputy chief executive officer and chief investment officer at the Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund (AP4). He has been employed at AP4 since 2008 and prior to that he worked for a family office. Eriksson has been head of equities at the Third Swedish National Pension Fund and in 1998 he started a hedge fund for the asset management company Catella, in 1986 Eriksson was a co-founder of the investment Bank Aragon Securities. He is also a member of the board of the Swedish real estate companies Vasakronan AB, Hemfosa Fastigheter AB and Rikshem AB. He studied Economics at Uppsala University and got a diploma in financial analysis from SSE- Stockholm School of Economics.
Monday 4:00pm Do hedge funds make sense for institutional portfolios?
Since 2009, Ulf Erlandsson has run global credit and SSA books at AP4 and is also responsible for sustainable fixed income investing and debt/equity trading overlays. Prior to this, he worked as a quantitative credit strategist at Barclays Capital. His publication record includes books like Systematic CDS index trading, Empirical analysis of the credit cycle, Recent Developments on Exchange Rates and various trade journal articles. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from Lund University.
Tuesday 2:00pm Case studies: How investors are tackling climate change
Mark Fawcett has been an investment manager for the last 27 years and managed money at a variety of institutions.
At Gartmore, he was head of Japanese equities while at American Express Asset Management International, he was chief investment officer. Before joining NEST, Fawcett was a partner at the boutique investment manager Thames River Capital LLP.
He has an MA from Oxford University and an MSc from the London Business School.
Tuesday 4:00pm The future of institutional investment – part two
Bent Flyvbjerg is the first BT Professor and inaugural chair of Major Programme Management at Oxford University. He works for better management of megaprojects and cities. He also writes about the philosophy and methodology of social science. Flyvbjerg is a leading international expert within the field of programme management and planning, perhaps best known for his book Megaprojects and risk – An anatomy of ambition, widely considered as essential reading for project managers, sponsors and those involved in megaprojects. He is the most cited scholar in his field and his ideas on optimism bias (the tendency to take an overly positive view of planned actions), and strategic misrepresentation (deliberately misstating the likely outcomes of actions) have been incorporated into project evaluation techniques around the world. Flyvbjerg continues to influence the development of project management both through his research and through teaching some of the leading programme managers of today and tomorrow.
Flyvbjerg has worked as a consultant to regulators, corporations, banks, national audit offices, the EU Commission, and the United Nations, and has been an adviser to the UK, Dutch and Danish governments in formulating national policies for infrastructure, environment, transportation, and science. His books and articles have been translated into 19 languages and his research has been covered by Science, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The BBC, and many others. He has received numerous honours and awards, including two Visiting Fulbright Scholarships to the US, where he did research at the University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley, and at Harvard University. He was knighted in the Order of the Dannebrog in 2002.
Flyvbjerg received his Ph.D. from Aarhus University, Denmark, and in addition holds two higher doctorates from Aalborg University; in engineering (Dr. Techn.) and science (Dr. Scient.) respectively. He is a Professorial Fellow and non-executive director of St Anne’s College, Oxford.
Tuesday 12:00pm Infrastructure best practice
Tomas Franzén currently holds a position as chief investment strategist at the Second Swedish National Pension Fund – AP2, in Gothenburg. AP2 is one of four buffer-funds within the recently reformed Swedish national pay-as-you-go pension system. As chief investment strategist, Franzen is responsible for issues related to investment policy and strategic asset allocation. AP2 has some $40 billion in assets under management invested in a broad-based global portfolio of public and private assets. Franzen is a member of the executive committee at AP2.
Before joining AP2 at the start-up in 2001, he held a position as chief strategist at Swedbank Markets, between 1998-2001, advising the banks’ Swedish and global clients on equity investments. Prior to that, he was chief strategist at Den Norske Bank between 1996-1998. During 1986-1996, he served as a senior economist at Svenska Handelsbanken in Stockholm. In the early 80’s, Franzen held a position as an economist at The Swedish Employers’ Confederation.
Franzen holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Stockholm, Sweden. He is also a holder of CEFA (Certified EFFAS Financial Analyst). He is also the chairman of the International Advisory Board of EDHEC Risk Institute and a member of the investment committee at The Foundation of Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg. He is furthermore the editor of the Anthology: A Decade of Challenges, A Collection of Essays on Pension and Investment and a frequent speaker at investor meetings around the world.
Tuesday 11:00am Alternative income streams
Jeff Gardner is a senior portfolio strategist at Bridgewater Associates. He is a senior member of the research group with expertise in portfolio structuring and the foreign exchange, interest rate, commodity, and equity markets. Gardner also works with Bridgewater’s clients to develop investment strategies that meet their objectives and to provide insight into the research group’s thinking on global markets and economic conditions. He has been with the firm since 1995. Gardner received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering.
Chetan Ghosh is the chief investment officer for Centrica’s pension scheme arrangements within a Common Investment Fund and has held an in-house role for the last five years. He is responsible for providing support to the directors of the investment committee. His role covers investment strategy considerations, asset class and manager research, and the liaison with the investment advisers.
He has 19 years industry experience, primarily from the consultancy side, where he spent five years as a pensions actuary and 12 years on the investment side, a large part of which was at Hewitt. Immediately prior to joining Centrica, he developed the fiduciary management offering at an asset manager where he was able to gain valuable experience on improving investment decision making governance structures.
Tuesday 11:00am Alternative income streams
Kathryn Graham is head of strategy coordination at Universities Superannuation Scheme Ltd (USS), which operates one of the largest pension schemes in the UK, with total fund assets of more than £40 billion ($60 billion). In this role she is in charge of asset allocation and portfolio construction as well as the active risk budgeting process. In addition she oversees external manager selection for public mandates and liability hedging.
She is a former director and head of special projects at BT Pension Scheme Management Limited (BTPSM), the pensions advisory arm of the BT Pension Scheme, one of the largest in the UK. Graham spent nine years at BTPSM establishing a new team mandated to invest directly into single manager hedge funds before taking responsibility for manager selection across the BT Scheme. Latterly she worked for the BTPSM chief executive, establishing the liability team and undertaking various projects related to scheme strategy.
Graham’s career began at SG Warburg in 1994 in fixed income derivatives and she has also worked at UBS and Progressive Alternative Investments before joining BTPSM. She was educated at Edinburgh University and holds an MA in Economics and Mathematics.
Graham is a trustee of the Hedge Fund Standards Board and chair of the London Board of 100 Women in Hedge Funds. She received Hedge Funds Review's outstanding contribution to the industry by an institutional investor award in 2011.
Monday 4:00pm Do hedge funds make sense for institutional portfolios?
Roger Gray has been chief investment officer at Universities Superannuation Scheme from September 2009 and from September 2012 chief executive of USS Investment Management. He joined USS from Hermes Fund Managers, where he was chief investment officer. Prior to that he worked for UBS as chief executive/chief investment officer at UBS Asset Management in Switzerland and also as global head of asset allocation and currency for UBS Brinson/UBS Global Asset Management. He began his career at Rothschild Asset Management in 1983 as a manager, rising to head of fixed income and currency and later to chief investment officer and head of institutional business. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford and then economics at Harvard, where he was a teaching fellow for international trade and finance, and for commodity and securities markets.
Nick Greenwood joined the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in 2007 and is the pension fund manager for the Royal County of Berkshire Pension Fund. He has been instrumental in conducting a thorough review of the fund’s governance structure as well as instigating a major overhaul of the fund’s investment strategy. In April 2008 the fund announced its new investment strategy with a wholesale move away from equities into other return seeking assets.
Tuesday 11:00am Alternative income streams
Cressida Hogg is responsible for overseeing CPPIB’s significant global infrastructure program. Prior to joining CPPIB in 2014, Hogg was the managing partner of 3i’s infrastructure business, leading deals in a variety of sectors.
Hogg holds a B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from St. John’s College Oxford and an MBA from the London Business School.
Tuesday 12:00pm Infrastructure best practice
Henrik Gade Jepsen joined ATP in 1999 from a position with Realkredit Danmark. Prior to that he worked as an economist at the Danish central bank (Danmarks Nationalbank) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, D.C.
Jepsen has taught macroeconomics at the Copenhagen Business School and Aarhus University. He is a Master of Science (MSc) in Economics and Management from Aarhus University.
He is chairman of the supervisory board of ATP Ejendomme and ATP Real Estate, ATP Private Equity Partners, ATP Alternative Investments, ATP Timberland Invest, ATP Fondsmæglerselskab, NOW:Pensions Investments Fondsmæglerselskab and Via Venture Partners He is a member of the supervisory board of FIH Erhvervsbank.
Monday 2:30pm A systemic approach to factor investing
John Kay is an economist whose career has spanned the academic world, business and public affairs. Currently, he is a visiting Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is a director of several public companies and contributes a weekly column to the Financial Times. He recently chaired the Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision-Making which reported to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in July 2012. He is the author of many books, including The Truth about Markets (2003), The Long and the Short of It: finance and investment for normally intelligent people who are not in the industry (2009) and Obliquity (2010). His latest book, Other People’s Money – towards a financial system for the needs of the economy rather than financial market participants – will be published by Profile Books and (in North America) by PublicAffairs in September 2015.
Tuesday 3:00pm The future of institutional investment – part one
Conor Kehoe is a director in McKinsey’s London office. He founded McKinsey’s private equity practice in Europe and leads its work in the industry globally. He previously led McKinsey’s high tech and telecoms practice.
Kehoe specialises in corporate governance, private equity, and corporate strategy. He mainly serves private equity firms and technology and telecom companies.
A frequent speaker on strategy and corporate governance, he teaches strategy for non-executives at the Stewardship and Corporate Governance Centre in Singapore and has lectured on investment and governance at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has also contributed to the revisions to the UK’s Board Code and Stewardship Code.
He is a member of the advisory board of a major private equity association and an executive committee member of McKinsey Solutions, which offers more standardised services from McKinsey.
Kehoe is also a founder member of the Global eSchools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI), a not-for-profit venture bringing IT to the educational systems of the least economically developed countries.
He joined McKinsey from the Granada Group, where he was chairman of one of the four divisions of this FTSE 100 company. He began his career as a software and control design engineer and holds a degree in electronic engineering from Trinity College Dublin, where he was a Foundation Scholar, and an MBA from INSEAD.
Tuesday 3:00pm The future of institutional investment – part one
Alex Koriath is head of Cambridge Associates' European pension practice. He has worked with a variety of pension funds and other institutional investors on asset allocation strategy, portfolio construction and management, manager selection and investment programme evaluation.
Prior to joining Cambridge, Koriath served as a director and head of manager research in KPMG’s investment advisory team. He led a number of large client relationships and was responsible for the direction and shape of the investment advice delivered.
Monday 1:30pm Macro diversification – how investors can diversify risk
Mark Mansley is the chief investment officer of the Environment Agency Pension Fund, with more than 30 years experience of investment. As well as helping develop the Environment Agency’s responsible investment strategy over the last decade (since 2011 as an employee), he worked with Rathbone Greenbank Investments, managing investments for charities and particularly pioneering impact investment. Previously, Mansley advised the Universities Superannuation Scheme on climate change, and helped several fund managers, such as Aviva, improve their investment processes and integrate sustainability considerations. He has a mathematics degree from Cambridge and is a Chartered Fellow of the Securities Investment Institute.
Tuesday 2:00pm Case studies: How investors are tackling climate change
Dan Melley is global head of consultant relations at Winton Global Investment Management, which applies an empirical scientific approach to exploiting inefficiencies in markets. He joined Winton in 2015 following a 17 year career at Mercer. At Mercer Melley built its UK fiduciary management offering from inception to an estimated $20 billion assets under implementation business. Melley has worked with institutional investors in the US, UK and South Africa on strategic asset allocation, manager selection and manager research. He is also a member of the AIMSE Council. A CFA charterholder, he graduated with honours from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, USA.
Tuesday 4:00pm The future of institutional investment – part two
Toby Nangle joined the company in 2012 and is currently global co-head of asset allocation and head of multi-asset, EMEA. In this role he is responsible for managing and co-managing a range of multi-asset portfolios, as well as providing strategic and tactical input to the company’s asset allocation process.
Before joining the company, Nangle worked at Baring Asset Management, initially in the fixed income team and subsequently as director of the multi-asset group. He holds degrees in History and International Relations from the University of Cambridge.
Deborah Ng is a portfolio manager, asset mix and risk, with the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. She leads the plan’s responsible investing initiatives, working internally with all investment teams to integrate ESG considerations in the investment processes and externally with global peers and organizations to promote sustainability in investments.
Other areas of focus for Ng and her team include the research, evaluation, and introduction of innovative asset allocation strategies that are designed to help meet the plan’s long-term liability objectives. She also provides input and support for the annual strategic investment plan and medium-term risk management.
Prior to joining Teachers’, Ng founded Acuity Communications, assisting investment firms such as UBS Securities, CIBC WM, and Desjardins Securities with their investment research requirements. She was awarded with a directors award from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto where she obtained her Master of Finance (with high distinction). She is also a CFA charterholder.
Tuesday 2:00pm Case studies: How investors are tackling climate change
Saker Nusseibeh was appointed chief executive of Hermes Investment Management in May 2012 after joining in June 2009 as head of investment. He is responsible for leading the firm’s growth strategy, while ensuring that all Hermes’ investment capabilities continue to deliver excellence.
Prior to Hermes, Nusseibeh joined Fortis Investments USA in 2005 as chief investment officer – global equities, latterly becoming global head of equities, responsible for managing the company’s 12 equity centres. Before this he was chief investment officer – global equities and head of marketing for SGAM UK.
Nusseibeh is the founder of the 300 Club, a group of leading investment professionals from across the globe who have joined together to raise awareness about the potential impact of current market thinking and behaviours, and to call for immediate action. He is also a member of the CFA Future of Finance Advisory Council and is delighted to be able to support the mentoring charity Mosaic, having recently joined its advisory board.
Nusseibeh has a BA and PhD in Medieval History from Kings College, University of London.
Tuesday 3:00pm The future of institutional investment – part one
Redmond is global head of credit at Towers Watson, leading a 45 person international team conducting research of all credit managers and products, spanning traditional bond strategies, all aspects of sub-investment grade credit markets, illiquid credit and credit long/short strategies. He co-led Towers Watson's build-out of direct hedge fund research into strategies outside of long-short equity in 2007, in particular focusing on discretionary global macro and credit long/short.
Redmond served as a member of Towers Watson's global investment committee for four years, the group of senior investment professionals responsible for Towers Watson's capital markets views. He now chairs the top-down research group, the body responsible for ensuring high quality top-down views are appropriately incorporated and reflected in Towers Watson’s manager research process and help direct research focus.
Redmond works closely with a number of Towers Watson's largest credit clients and has experience consulting to clients on a broad range of issues including investment strategy, manager structure and manager selection.
He holds the CFA UK Level 3 Certificate in Investment Management and has a BA in Mathematical Sciences from St. Catherine's College, University of Oxford.
Tuesday 9:30am Illiquidity premium: what is it and where do you find it?
Fiona Reynolds joined the PRI as managing director in February, 2013. In this newly created role, she is responsible for the organisational development and growth of the PRI. Prior to joining the PRI, Reynolds was the chief executive at the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (“AIST”) for six years. She has more than 16 years’ experience in the pension sector and has played a role in advocating pension policy change on behalf of working Australians. Reynolds has formerly been a director of AUSfund, Industry Funds Credit Control, and the National Network of Women in Super. She is also on the board of Australia for UNHCR – United Nations High Commission for Refugees. In September 2012 she was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of Australia's top 100 women of influence for her work in public policy. She has a range of superannuation qualifications and a Grad.Dip in Public Policy.
Tuesday 3:00pm The future of institutional investment – part one
Sandra Robertson joined OU Endowment Management in September 2007 as chief investment officer and chief executive. Prior to this, she spent 14 years at the Wellcome Trust, most recently as co-head of portfolio management responsible for the day-to-day management of an investment portfolio of circa £14.5 billion ($21.5 billion), including investments in real estate, infrastructure, equities, buyouts, venture capital, credit and bonds. As co-head of portfolio management at the Wellcome Trust, Robertson was also responsible for all investment decisions within agreed policy, including asset allocation, deal or manager origination, negotiation of legal and business terms and disposal or termination of managers or assets. She was also on the investment committee of the Wellcome Trust from 1997-2007.
Robertson is a graduate of Napier College, Edinburgh (BA Hons) and is a member of the investment committees of the University and University College, Oxford. She is also a non-executive director of Rothschild Investment Trust plc.
Monday 9:00am Welcome address
Chris Rule joined LPFA in October 2014 as chief investment officer. He is responsible for managing the Authority’s £4.9 billion ($7.2 billion) assets, developing and enhancing LPFA’s investment strategy and directing the work of the in-house investment team.
Rule has a wealth of investing and executive experience within asset management businesses. He has held a number of senior positions including head of alternatives at SEB Investment Management (Stockholm’s Enskilda Bank); chief investment officer of SEB Alternative Solutions and Key Asset Management Ltd. Prior to this he was a principal at Old Mutual Asset Managers (UK) Ltd where he founded and co-managed the multi strategy team. Rule originally trained as a risk manager at GNI Fund Management where he went on to take investment management responsibility for their hedge fund portfolios.
Rule graduated from Manchester University, holds the investment management certificate and is a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst.
In his private life, he is actively involved in supporting state education in a voluntary capacity.
Tuesday 4:00pm The future of institutional investment – part two
Staffan Sevon has been in his current role since January 2013. He has overall responsibility for Ilmarinen's internal hedge fund, Ilmarinen Alpha. Prior to this, he served as chief investment officer at Veritas Pension Insurance Company from December 2008. He served as chief investment officer at Nordea Investment Management Sverige AB and was a member of the management team of Nordea Investment Management in Helsinki. At Nordea, he was responsible for portfolio management in Finland with operational focus on Finnish equities. Sevon served as chief investment officer for equities and as the head of equities at Local Government Pension Institution (Keva).
Monday 1:30pm Macro diversification – how investors can diversify risk
Stephen Siderow is the co-founder, managing partner and co-president of BlueMountain Capital Management, a leading alternative asset manager with $21 billion in assets under management and approximately 300 professionals worldwide. At BlueMountain, he oversees the firm’s business development and strategic initiatives. Siderow is also a member of the firm’s management and compliance committees.
Prior to co-founding BlueMountain in 2003, Siderow was a senior consultant with McKinsey & Company’s New York office, where he focused on the financial services industry, serving senior management executives and chief executives on a variety of issues in business strategy, organisation and operations. Prior to that, Siderow was a corporate attorney with Cleary, Gottlieb in New York. He serves on the board of directors of the Birthright Israel Foundation, a program that provides the gift of first-time peer education trips to Israel for young Jewish adults.
Siderow serves on the board of directors of Ars Nova, which provides training and development programs to young performing artists. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute at Mt. Sinai Hospital whose mission is to advance the field of palliative medicine through clinical, educational and research initiatives. Siderow holds a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School and Bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in Philosophy from Amherst College. Siderow was also a Fulbright and a Sheldon Scholar in Israel.
Tuesday 9:30am Illiquidity premium: what is it and where do you find it?
Jean-Marc Stenger is chief investment officer for alternative investments at Lyxor, responsible for overseeing alternative multi-manager investment solutions and portfolio advisory services. Stenger joined Lyxor in 2003 as fund manager and was promoted in 2005 to deputy chief investment officer for alternative investments, where he was in charge of supervising alternative investments, cross asset portfolios and advisory services. He became head of alternative investments in 2012. Prior to joining Lyxor, he worked on financial modelling at SG Corporate & Investment Banking in Frankfurt.
Stenger graduated with a degree in engineering from the ENSAM (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers) and holds the CAIA (Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst) designation.
Monday 4:00pm Do hedge funds make sense for institutional portfolios?
David W. Stewart joined Santander Asset Management UK as chief investment officer in 2012, recently moving up to become director of pensions solutions. A key part of his role is advising Santander UK’s $15 billion DB pension fund on its award-winning investment strategy. He has 25 years’ investment management experience, including strategic leadership positions within major private wealth, institutional and sovereign wealth organisations in Europe, the Middle East and North America. He was recognised as one of the UK’s highest rated global investors, has a MA (Hons) in Philosophy from Edinburgh University, and an MBA from the Cass School of Business.
Tuesday 9:30am Illiquidity premium: what is it and where do you find it?
Payson Swaffield is vice president and chief income investment officer of Eaton Vance Management. He is responsible for all income disciplines at Eaton Vance, including investment-grade and high-yield bonds, floating-rate bank loans, global fixed income, municipal bonds and customised solutions for institutional and retail accounts. Swaffield joined Eaton Vance in 1990 as a senior financial analyst in the bank loan group. He served as co-department head of the bank loan group and co-portfolio manager of Eaton Vance’s bank loan funds from 1996 to 2007. Previously, he held positions in valuation and corporate finance at Conning & Company, State Street Bank, and Duff & Phelps, Inc., and in commercial lending at Northern Trust.
Swaffield earned a B.A. in Economics from Middlebury College in 1978 and an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1983. He served on the board of the LSTA (Loan Syndications and Trading Association) from 2001-2008, and currently serves as an overseer of the Museum of Science in Boston.
Tuesday 11:00am Alternative income streams
Tate has been an investment industry media publisher and conference producer since 1996. In his media career, Tate has launched and overseen dozens of print and electronic publications. He is the chief executive and major shareholder of Conexus Financial, which was formed in 2005, and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia. The company stages more than 20 conferences and events each year – in London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Beijing, Sydney and Melbourne – and publishes five media brands, including the global website and strategy newsletter for global institutional investors www.top1000funds.com. One of the company’s signature events is the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium. Conexus Financial’s events aim to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes. Tate served for seven years on the board of Australia’s most high profile homeless charity, The Wayside Chapel; and he has underwritten the welfare of 60,000 people in 28 villages throughout Uganda via The Hunger Project.
Monday 10:45am The European financial system and the Eurozone crisis: implications for global investors
Monday 11:30am Continued slow economic growth and the impact on asset allocation
Monday 1:30pm Macro diversification – how investors can diversify risk
Tuesday 9:30am Illiquidity premium: what is it and where do you find it?
Fiona Trafford-Walker is director of consulting at Frontier. She joined Industry Fund Services as manager, investment services in August 1994 and was a foundation staff member of that company. She was promoted to manager, investment advisory services in October 1997, and took responsibility for the management of IFS’ asset consulting business from that time. She transferred to Frontier at its inception in July 2000 and was managing director of Frontier until July 2011.
At Frontier, Trafford-Walker is directly responsible for providing investment advisory services to various clients, chairing the internal investment committee as well as the manager ratings committee and overseeing the investment consulting deliverables of the firm.
She was previously employed in the asset consulting services unit of Towers Perrin and as a research officer on a Queensland Treasury sponsored project, helping to develop and maintain an econometric model of the Queensland and Australian economies.
She was recently ranked amongst the world’s top 25 most influential investment consultants by respected international finance journal aiCIO.
She holds a Bachelor of Economics with first class Honours from James Cook University of North Queensland in Townsville and was awarded a University Medal on completion of her Honours year. She completed her Master of Finance at RMIT in 1995. Trafford-Walker is also a member of the investment committee of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.
Urwin assumed the new post of global head of investment content in July 2008 after acting as the global head of the investment practice from 1995 to 2008. He joined Watson Wyatt in 1989 to start the firm's investment consulting practice. He is also involved with the Towers Watson thought-leadership group, Thinking Ahead Group. He is the author of a number of papers on asset allocation policy, manager selection and governance and sustainability. He is an advisory director to MSCI, is on the CFA Future of Finance Council and was formerly a CFA Board Member. Urwin has a degree in mathematics and a Master's in Applied Statistics from Oxford University. He qualified as a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 1983.
Tuesday 8:30am Governance on steroids
Alex van der Velden is co-founder and chief investment officer of Ownership Capital, an independent, long-horizon global equity manager that achieves superior returns through active ownership. Based in the Netherlands, he has more than 18 years of international investment experience combining traditional investment management and responsible investing. Prior to Ownership Capital, he worked at Dutch investment manager PGGM, where he founded and headed its €3 billion ($3.2 billion) Responsible Equity Portfolio. Prior to PGGM, he was the founding executive director of FairPensions in the UK. Van der Velden also worked in private equity and corporate finance at Coller Capital, JPMorgan and Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.
Tuesday 2:00pm Case studies: How investors are tackling climate change
David Vines is a Professor of Economics and Fellow of Balliol College at Oxford University, where he is also the director of the Ethics and Economics Programme in the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the James Martin School, and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. From 1992 until 2011 he was Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Australian National University. Vines teaches macroeconomics, international economics and development economics to both undergraduates and graduates. He obtained a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Melbourne University, and an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge.
His research has mainly been on international macroeconomics and on global economic governance. His initial work was carried out from 1978 to 1985 in Cambridge with the Nobel-Prize winner James Meade. Together they published some of the very earliest research on inflation-targeting regimes. Vines is currently working on international macroeconomic cooperation, so as to ensure a sustained recovery from the global financial crisis. Between 1994 and 2000 he was the director of an ESRC Research Programme on Global Economic Institutions, and from 2008 to 2012 he was the research director of a European Union Framework Seven Research Program, PEGGED, on the European Dimension of the Politics and Economics of Global Governance. In 2003 Vines was a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, and earlier, from 1985 to 1992, he was the Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy at the University of Glasgow. During that period he was a member of the board of Channel Four Television, and also a director of Analysys, which was at the time Europe’s pre-eminent telecoms consultancy firm. Nearly 20 years ago David organised an interdisciplinary seminar on integrity with the philosopher Alan Montefiore; the proceedings of which were published by Routledge in 1999 as A. Montefiore and D. Vines, Integrity in the Public and the Private Domains. More recently he has published The Leaderless Economy: Why the World Economy Fell Apart and How to Fix it (Princeton University Press), and Keynes: Useful Economics for the World Economy (MIT Press), both with Peter Temin. Last year Nicholas Morris and he edited a volume, published by Oxford University Press, called Capital Failure: Rebuilding Trust in Financial Services.
Peter Wallach started his career in private banking with Coutts, working in the City for 12 years. In 1997 he relocated to the North-West working initially for Close Wealth Management as an investment manager. In 2004, he joined Merseyside Pension Fund, taking up his current position as head of the pension fund in April 2007.
Monday 1:30pm Macro diversification – how investors can diversify risk
Amanda White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events including The Fiduciary Investors Symposium. She is the editor of www.top1000funds.com, the online news and analysis site for the world’s largest institutional investors. White has been an investment journalist for more than 18 years and has edited industry journals including Investment & Technology, Investor Weekly and MasterFunds Quarterly. She was previously editorial director of InvestorInfo and has worked as a freelance journalist for the Australian Financial Review, CFO, Asset and Asia Asset Management. She has a Bachelor of Economics and a Master of Arts in Journalism, she was previously a columnist for the Canadian publication, Corporate Knights, which is distributed by the Globe and Mail and The Washington Post.
Monday 2:30pm A systemic approach to factor investing
Monday 4:00pm Do hedge funds make sense for institutional portfolios?
Tuesday 11:00am Alternative income streams
Richard Wiliams joined RPMI Railpen in April 2014 as chief investment risk officer. He is part of the investment leadership team which manages £20 billion ($29 billion) across a wide range of asset classes. Over the previous 20 years Williams held senior portfolio management positions at BlueCrest Capital Management (UK) LLP and at FFTW. He began his career as a consulting actuary and is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.
Williams is also an experienced member of investment committees and a NED. He is an independent member of the Nestlé UK Pension Fund and the Health Foundation Investment Committees. He is chairman of CBF Church of England Funds and a NED of both CCLA Investment Management Limited and International Shipowners’ Reinsurance SA.
Tuesday 4:00pm The future of institutional investment – part two
Ronald Wuijster is a member of the board and the chief client officer at APG Asset Management. He joined ABP in 2006 as a managing director strategic portfolio management and had the same position as of 2008 for APG. Prior to this Ronald worked at Robeco Groep NV since 1990, where he started as a senior portfolio manager and held several positions ending his career at Robeco as the director of research.
Wuijster studied Business Economics and Law at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He studied Finance and Accounting at the London School of Economics in London and Psychology at the University of Leiden.
Next to his job at APG he chairs the committee of asset management from the Dutch Pension Federation and he is a member of the accreditation committee of the DSI.
Monday 2:30pm A systemic approach to factor investing