CIO’s Ninth Annual Industry Innovation Awards: Nominations Open

It’s time again to nominate and celebrate the industry’s most innovative asset owners and managers/servicers. CIO’s ninth annual Industry Innovation Awards will take place December 13 at the New York Public Library, celebrating the most innovative and talented players of institutional investing.

Please nominate asset owners and managers/servicers for this year’s awards via our digital survey or by filling out our 2018 CIO nominations form and emailing your nominations to CIOeditors@strategic-i.com. Nominations will close August 4, and all finalists will be announced in early September.

This year, the CIO editorial team will consult an advisory board of former and current chief investment officers, including Raphael Arndt, CIO of Australia’s Future Fund; Jagdeep Singh Bachher, CIO, vice president of Investments, University of California; Matt Clark, CIO, South Dakota Investment Council; Scott Evans, CIO of the New York City Pension Funds; David Holmgren, CIO of Hartford HealthCare; Tom Joy, CIO, Church of England; Kim Lew, CIO, Carnegie Corporation of New York; Richard Nuzum, president of Mercer’s global wealth business (2017 Consultant of the Year); and Bob Watson, CIO of FCA US. Some categories, such as investment outsourcing, transition management, and corporate investment strategies, will be judged largely on data collected via the CIO survey system.

The lifetime achievement award, which Ashbel C. “Ash” Williams, executive director and CIO of the Florida State Board of Administration (SBA), won last year, will be presented at the dinner. An overall winner from the asset owner categories will also be chosen and awarded CIO of the Year (presented last year to Evans).

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Our Next Generation Award is chosen the evening of the awards dinner, following a panel at the CIO Influential Investors’ Forum.

This year’s asset owner categories include (2017 winners in parentheses):

Foundation (Carnegie Foundation, Kim Lew)

Endowment (Church Commissioners for England, Tom Joy)

Corporate Defined Benefit Pension Plan Below $5 Billion (Computer Sciences – CSRA Inc., Brian Reed)

Corporate Defined Benefit Pension Plan Above $5 Billion (ABB,Elisabeth Bourqui)

Public Defined Benefit Plan Below $15 Billion (South Dakota Investment Council, Matt Clark)

Public Defined Benefit Plan Between $15 Billion and $100 Billion (Hawaii Employees’ Retirement System, Vijoy Chattergy)

Public Defined Benefit Plan Above $100 Billion (NYC Retirement System, Scott Evans)

Sovereign Wealth Fund (Australian Future Fund, Raphael Arndt)

Healthcare Organization (Hartford HealthCare, David Holmgren)

Defined Contribution Plan (Fiat Chrysler FCA US,Bob Watson)

ESG(University of California Regents, Jagdeep Singh Bachher)

Next Generation (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Carlos Rangel)
Consulting (Mercer,Rich Nuzum)

*New 2018 Category: Collaboration

Asset management categories include (2017 winners in parentheses; italics indicate altered category):

Fixed Income (Nuveen Asset Management)

Equities (including alternative equity beta) (BlackRock)

Multi-Asset (including risk-balanced strategies) (Neuberger Berman)

Private Equity (Apollo Global Management)

Hedge Funds (Citadel)

Real Assets (AEW Global)

Defined Contribution Strategies (Prudential)

Investment Outsourcing (Russell Investments)

Corporate Investment Strategies (includes the overall criteria to helpcorporate CIOs achieve their goals including positioning for growth, innovation in risk management, and hedging overall portfolios.)

(Legal & General Investment Management America)

Transition Management (BlackRock)

Data & Technology (FactSet)

ESG Investing(Generation Investment Management)

*New 2018 Category: Emerging Markets

*New 2018 Category: Corporate LDI Strategies

Tags: CIO, Innovation Awards

If you’re looking for evidence of economic weakness, recent numbers for housing starts are troubling. Residential starts fell 12.3% in June, to the slowest rate since last year’s monster hurricanes, according to the US Census Bureau. But maybe we shouldn’t be too worried.

Why? The homebuilding industry has been askew ever since the Great Recession. The crash wiped out a lot of builders, and they haven’t come back.

Some history: After the financial crisis, home construction began trending upward from the sub-basement, then stalled out this year, and last month marked the biggest decline since November 2016. The actual June results missed projections by the largest amount in more than 11 years, said Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group.

As a result, homebuilder stocks are ebbing. Over the past six months, they have slid almost 11%.

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The state of housing has long been a harbinger of how the economy will fare in the future. That sure was true with the 2008 housing crash.

Nevertheless, there are a number of positive economic signals these days, such as the recent jobs report, to bolster optimism.

Plus, it’s not a lack of consumer confidence or bank accounts that are holding back housing starts. Higher mortgage interest rates and rising home prices are strong influences.

But the bigger problem likely is the relative lack of builders. In 2007, 98,067 homebuilders were working in the US. By 2012, that figure had fallen to 48,261. Hence, the supply of dwellings is lower. In 2017, 1.9 new homes were sold per 1,000 people in the US versus the 2.6 average over the past half-century.

Tags: Economy, home sales, housing starts