NextGen Nominations Open | Chief Investment Officer

It’s been quite a year for all of us. Incredible skill, resourcefulness, grit, and leadership in the younger generation of CIOs-to-come certainly made many things possible. Now, it’s time for those in the know to extend a much-needed atta-girl or atta-boy, and to shine a spotlight on those who we think will likely rise to take the CIO seat one day.

We’re inviting asset owners and managers to champion the brightest rising stars of the industry through this nomination form.

From your nominations, CIO will select 25 future leaders to be profiled in candid Q&A’s that highlight their skills and interests. The top five will likely compete in a title round during our Dec. 7 Influential Investors Forum to be crowned that evening at our gala as NextGen of the Year.

Our last winners were Elizabeth Jourdan in 2019 and Carlos Rangel in 2018. NextGen replaced our Forty Under Forty list, which means candidates can be 29 to 49 years old, male or female, and from any allocation fund in the world. Additionally, nominees can be former Forty Under Forty or NextGen achievers but cannot repeat from 2020.

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Both asset owners and managers can make nominations, but those selected must work for asset owners.

This is not just an ego boost for these individuals. As with our previous Forties, NextGens have been able to break the glass ceilings and enter the upper echelons of the industry. Make a good case for them, though, because there is a high volume of submissions.

A few examples of the paths of our rising stars, since they were featured as NextGens:

Carlos Rangel took the CIO seat at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation;
Jenny Chan was the senior investment officer for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, an organization she worked at for 11 years, when she was named a 2018 NextGen. By that August, she had been named CIO of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia;
Chaya Slain, now CIO of AdCap management, has a similar story;
Benjamin Frede was promoted to senior portfolio manager–private equity and private credit at the Public School & Education Employee Retirement Systems of Missouri;
Christie Hamilton moved to head of investments from investment director at Children’s Health;
Thomas Lefler transitioned from director of absolute return at Raytheon to CIO at Eagle Advisors;
Ruchit Shah was promoted to CIO at the Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Company;
Terence Thompson departed his position as investment manager at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona to work as a director of investments at a single family office;
Mark Shulgan is the new growth equity managing director at the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), after working as the senior portfolio manager for thematic investing at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) at the time of his profile; and
Charles Wu was promoted to deputy CIO of Australia’s State Super

Nominations, of course, will be kept anonymous to provide the best experience possible. To nominate, please answer this questionnaire about who you think is the next big investment rock star. If more than one candidate comes to mind, feel free to feature multiple nominations in your answers, and please incorporate as much detail as possible in your responses.

A few rules:

Nominees must be asset owners working in public or private pension plans, endowments or foundations, sovereign wealth funds, and/or single-family offices. (They cannot be asset managers, outsourced CIOs, or work in multi-family offices.)
Nominees must be senior investment professionals in a CIO’s investment office or report to CIOs.
Nominees must be under the age of 50.

The nomination process will close on April 1, 2021.

NOMINATE HERE

Tags: CIO, CIO NextGen, NextGen, NextGen of the Year

Saying he wanted to boost portfolio returns, California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) investment committee member Jason Perez made a second try at reversing the pension plan’s ban on tobacco stocks. But Perez’s proposal was overwhelmingly rejected Monday night.

At a meeting of the CalPERS investment committee, Perez’s new attempt—his first was in March 2019—attracted only one other vote on the 13-member panel, from Margaret Brown. The ban has been in place since 2001.

The $440 billion pension system would have earned an additional $3.6 billion in investment gains if it kept tobacco stocks in its portfolio between Jan. 1, 2001, and June 30, 2020, according to an analysis by Wilshire Associates, a CalPERS general investment consultant.

But more recently, the pension system has done better by having a tobacco-free equity portfolio. Wilshire concluded that CalPERS gained $856 million by holding no tobacco stocks between Jan. 1, 2017, and June 30 last year, because these shares lagged behind the market during that period.

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CalPERS, the largest US pension plan by assets, was one of the first institutional investors in the world to remove tobacco companies from its holdings.

When its investment committee debated the issue in the 2000, the panel concluded that lawsuits by ex-smokers and their relatives would send stock prices collapsing and even bankrupt some tobacco companies.

What the committee didn’t anticipate is that the industry would settle the lawsuits and remake itself to gain huge profits, as it added foreign markets and hooked a new generation of consumers on the products.

CalPERS initially revisited the divestment decision in 2016, when Wilshire first presented a cost analysis showing the pension plan was suffering a multibillion-dollar loss by not investing in tobacco.

Many investment committee members at the time said they favored reinvesting in tobacco. The reinvestment issue surfaced as investment staffers and investment committee members were looking for ways to help boost financial returns for the pension plan.

CalPERS has been chronically unfunded since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, when it lost tens of billions of dollars (its current funding is 70%). In the latest fiscal year ending last June 30, CalPERS made 4.7%, which is below its annual expected 7% rate of return.

The 2016 reinvestment issue quickly stirred major controversy. Anti-smoking and health groups criticized the investment committee. They derided the irony of the pension plan reinvesting in tobacco stocks, given that tobacco was making some of its members sick, adding to health costs the retirement system must shoulder.

CalPERS purchases health care for many of its members. In fact, the program is the second-largest purchaser of medical care for government workers in the United States, behind the federal government.

Perez, a police sergeant from Corona, Calif., a suburban community 48 miles from Los Angeles, won election to the CalPERS investment committee and board in late 2018. His platform called for the pension system to invest in any asset possible that made money—as long as it was legal.

“This is a retirement fund, not a political fund, and that’s what I want the goal to be,” Perez told his fellow investment committee members Monday night.

Brown, the other supporter of reinvestment on the panel, backed him up with a similar argument. “The investment staff should decide what to buy or sell, when to buy or sell, how much to buy or sell,” she said.

Their comments didn’t sway the rest of the investment committee, whose members include the California state treasurer and the state controller.

This time around, Perez could only count on Brown’s vote. Back in March 2019, when he first presented a similar reinvestment plan, he received two other investment committee votes.

Perez worded his resolution Monday to lift the prohibition, but also to allow for the pension system’s investment staff to decide if reinvestment in tobacco should be made.

The investment committee also knocked down another plan Perez presented to allow the pension system to reinvest in firearms manufacturers that make weapons that are illegal in California.

But firearms manufacturers made up only about $8.5 million in the CalPERS portfolio before the investment committee divested its gun stock holdings in 2013, while tobacco companies made up more than $1.2 billion before divestment.

After rejecting Perez’s plan, the investment committee then reaffirmed its ban on tobacco and firearms manufacturer stocks. It also upheld bans mandated by the California legislature on CalPERS investing in thermal coal companies and companies that do business in Iran and Sudan.

Perez was the only investment committee member who dissented on the thermal coal and Iran and Sudan investments. Even Brown went along with the rest of the board.

Overall, the thermal coal, firearms, Iran, and Sudan investments combined made up a little more than $200 million in CalPERS’ equity portfolio. Reinvesting in tobacco stocks would mean that CalPERS would invest at least several billion dollars in the companies.

Wilshire’s analysis of CalPERS reinvesting in tobacco stocks also showed the pension could see transaction costs between $3.97 million and $15.24 million.

Perez’s case to reinvest in tobacco was not helped by Dan Bienvenue, CalPERS’ interim chief investment officer. He told the investment committee Monday that it was unclear how tobacco stocks would perform investment-wise in the future. He offered no advice to the investment committee on which way to proceed.

“I do think a reasonable investor can come to either place, especially when considering some of the costs associated with investing” in tobacco, he said.

Investment committee member David Miller said he did not see a reason to reinvest in tobacco stocks, a belief endorsed by most other investment committee members who did not speak during the more than two-hour discussion.

He said health and litigation issues continued to surround tobacco, along with uneven investment returns. “We are better off without tobacco,” he said.