Wilshire and Morningstar Creep into Manager Analytics

The consultancy firm and ratings agency have added new fund and manager analysis tools to their product rosters.

(June 18, 2014) — Rating agency Morningstar and consultancy firm Wilshire Associates have launched new manager and fund analysis services.

Morningstar said its manager research offering was designed to combine all the group’s analysis, data, software, and other “tools” through a customisable service which includes access to Morningstar’s network of product analysts. Senior staff involved in the various elements of the service include Kunal Kapoor, head of global information products and client solutions, and Haywood Kelly, vice president of equity research.

Kapoor said the service was meant to help large institutions, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds “conduct and complement their own research and supplement advisor and investor communication”.

Meanwhile, Wilshire Associates’ consultancy arm, Wilshire Consulting, has added a risk management tool for pension plans and investment portfolios, dubbed Wilshire Compass Acuity. Julia Bonafede, president of Wilshire Consulting, said the tool was a combination of the firm’s existing Wilshire Compass and Wilshire Total Risk Management Solution teams.

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The service aims to help investors monitor various types of risk and how they apply to each holding within their portfolios. The chief focuses of the service are asset allocation risk, weighting risk—which refers to differences between strategic allocations and actual asset class weightings—the risk involved if a manager uses a different benchmark to the portfolio, and the active management risk.

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CERN CEO Takes Investment Chair at Lombard Odier Pension

The Switzerland-based CEO has taken on a complementing role.

(June 19, 2014) — The CEO of the CERN pension fund has taken over as chairman of the investment committee at Swiss fund manager Lombard Odier’s pension fund, aiCIO has learned.

Theodore Economou, who has led the pension fund for scientists and other staff at the CERN laboratories in Geneva since 2009, will conduct the first meeting in this new role next week. Economou, who has twice featured on aiCIO’s Power 100 list of influential investors, remains at the helm at CERN.

“We welcome Mr Economou as chairman of the investment committee of the Lombard Odier pension scheme,” Hubert Keller, managing partner at Lombard Odier, told aiCIO. “He shares our conviction that investors must concentrate on risk to build stable portfolio returns over time. We’ve been running our pension fund on a risk-based footing since 2009 and Mr Economou’s experience in setting risk budgets in his work on CERN’s pension fund will be a valuable complement.”

Economou took over the full-time investment role of the CERN pension last year following the departure of former CIO Gregoire Haenni. However, from the outset he had worked with Haenni and was integral in reforming the portfolio the pair inherited in 2009. At that time, the fund had a portfolio divided 60% to risk assets and 40% to bonds. It was 60.5% funded on an IAS19 basis, according to its accounts.

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“We look at risk management as two processes,” Economou told aiCIO last year. “One: the overall risk management process, showing us the acceptable risk constraints. This tells us what the size of the sandbox we can play in is.”

The Lombard Odier pension fund has been the testing ground for some of its products—including some if its smart beta approaches. The CHF1.5 billion ($1.67 billion) fund was a runner up in a corporate pension category at aiCIO’s European Innovation Awards.

Economou also sits on the investment advisory committee of the Virginia Retirement System in the US.

Related content: Power 100 Theodore Economou & CERN CIO Steps Aside

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