News category: Credit And Fixed Income

Index-linked fixed income searches have made up close to 20% of all searches year-to-date, up almost a third on the same period last year, according to MandateConnect data.

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It seems like nothing is ever Just Right when it comes to trend following these days.

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Railpen, one of the U.K.’s largest pension funds managing around GBP34 billion in assets, had added a GBP2 billion multi-asset credit strategy to its GBP20 billion Growth Fund, managed by Craig Heron, head of public markets. While the pension had some exposure to certain elements of credit already, this is a brand new mandate for the Growth Fund and is intended to improve the fund’s the risk and return profile, Heron said. The fund also invests across equities, real estate, government bonds and other diversifying strategies.

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GAM officials are actively researching, designing and implementing systematic strategies to offer diversified solutions to their clients. Chris Longworth, head of GAM Systematic in Cambridge, discussed GAM’s work this year on adapting its trend following model to consider timing, as well as new markets and asset classes the firm is considering for systematic strategies. GAM Systematic invests USD620 million of GAM’s USD77 billion.  

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Equable’s 2023 State of Pensions report opened a bit of pandora’s box this week with its report showing that pension funds have more money in alternative investments than at any point, both in dollar terms (USD1.63 trillion) and in share of asset allocations (34%). Equable’s Anthony Randazzo and Jonathan Moody went as far as to say that institutional investors are in a state of addiction to risk assets.

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New York State Teachers’ Retirement System disclosed this week that it withdrew more than USD2 billion from internally and externally-managed international equity portfolios as part of its second-quarter rebalancing. More than USD1 billion of that rebalancing was poured into internally-managed long-term bonds as well as high-yield funds, the system said in a statement available on MandateConnect.

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The USD6.4 billion Fire and Police Pension Association of Colorado has adjusted its long-term investment allocation policy, increasing its long-term target allocation to absolute return and rates by 1% and lowering its target allocation to long-short equity by 2%. These changes are being implemented as a result of FPPA’s latest asset liability study, which began in early 2023.

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Alaska’s Retirement Management Board, which oversees the state’s USD39 billion in retirement assets, is looking to expand and improve its new multi-asset strategies allocation.

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The USD34 billion Employees’ Retirement System of Texas approved two new investments last month, including a USD75 million investment in a long/short European credit hedge fund. The new investments are notable because ERS, along with many other U.S. pension plans, has mostly focused on adding private equity funds in recent months and MandateConnect data show there have been only limited new allocations to hedge funds.

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Nkonye Okoh, head of U.S. pension, endowment and foundation derivatives sales at JPMorgan, led panelists Roni Israelov, president and chief executive officer at NDVR, Farouk Jivraj, head of alternative risk premia at Fidelity Investments and James Ong, senior portfolio manager at Invesco in a conversation about fixed income factors. The panelists talked about their approaches to fixed income and why they think more portfolio managers aren’t taking a factor-based approach to the asset class.

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