(Art by John Cuneo)The head of credit at the UK’s Universities Superannuation
Scheme (USS) is to leave his role after a six-year tenure to enter politics.
Leandros Kalisperas sent peers a note announcing his departure last week, a copy of which CIO obtained. He has led the £49 billion ($71 billion) fund’s public credit investments since joining in 2010, after two years running his own advisory firm.
In a statement, USS thanked Kalisperas for his “substantial contributions” to the portfolio.
Richard Fisher, head of fixed income, is to take on responsibility for internal credit investments in an “integrated fixed income team,” which will also include the pension’s government bond allocation. Emily Porter-Lynch, head of strategy implementation, will oversee USS’ external credit managers.
In his note, Kalisperas said his departure was “a very difficult decision” due in part to his “strong personal loyalty” to Roger Gray, chief executive of USS Investment Management.
Gray hired Kalisperas to oversee a 5% allocation to public credit strategies, the pair having met while Kalisperas was a self-employed consultant.
“Having been a hard-nosed banker I didn’t know what to think,” Kalisperas said of meeting Gray in a 2012 interview. “He was extremely technical, thoughtful, and switched on.”
The career change was prompted, Kalisperas told colleagues, by observing “destructive” political and financial events in Cyprus and Greece—his mother is Greek-Cypriot—and his disappointment with recent political developments in the UK.
“I believe it will take spokesmen from the left with ‘conservative’ backgrounds at a political level to provide credibility and an articulate response force,” Kalisperas said. “Such people will need… to use the language, discipline, and pragmatism of the right, in the service of the political economic values of the left.”
Kalisperas will leave at the end of June, and plans to spend “most of the second half of the year” researching his thesis.
Since May 2015, the USS credit team has been bringing assets in-house in line with a broader aim across the pension to establish “cost-effective and aligned internal investment solutions across asset classes.”
USS has been nominated in two categories for the CIO Innovation Awards, to be presented on June 2 in London.
Related: Forty Under Forty—Leandros Kalisperas, 2012, 2013, 2014 & Who Needs Daily Dealing?