Investors Without Borders

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For all the wonders of modern communication, there is something to be said for being there. Whether performing due diligence or reporting a story, no amount of video conferencing can deliver the unexpected details and chance encounters that happen on location. Just ask Jim Leech, the outgoing head of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, who sat down with Editor-in-Chief Kip McDaniel for an extended interrogation at the fund’s Toronto headquarters (see page 43). 

While some funds are worried about owning companies in their own backyards, Leech says this has never been a concern at Ontario Teachers’. In fact, the fund is expanding its backyards: Hong Kong’s securities regulator just gave it the go-ahead to open an Asian office. Leech is retiring at the end of the year, but his successor is set to have staff on the ground in three continents. This global team won’t hurt Ontario Teachers’ chances of holding onto the title of the Best Pension in the World (judging by 10-year returns, at least).

Kip, a fellow Canuck, had gone “on location” for the interview with Leech in order to renew his passport—in preparation for another trip. aiCIO held its inaugural European awards dinner in London, which meant all four members of the editorial team were on the same side of the ocean for a change. The event also brought together CIOs, top deputies, and other industry types from the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Benelux, and the rest of Europe. This being my first on-the-job visit overseas, I noticed that it’s not just punctuation and currencies that change over borders. Institutional investors are also a little different everywhere you go. Take, for example, what the dinner and a week of working out of our London offices taught me about the European scene:

1) Acronyms. Europeans have a taste for brevity plus an uncanny ability to keep AP4 straight from APG and ATP, and know PPF from PFZW and SPK. Americans, equally formulaic, prefer their fund names long-winded and declarative: State/City + Employees/Teachers + Retirement System.
2) Institutional investors across the pond seem a tighter-knit community than in North America, where the investor population is both larger and spread farther afield.
3) Danish pension fund managers are very, very tall. Danes average a full two inches taller than Americans, and yet I can’t help but suspect ATP recruits straight out of Denmark’s national basketball team.

The London dinner and our first-ever European edition mark a new global reach for the publication. By my best estimate, this issue was reported and written from five countries—the US, UK, Netherlands, Canada, and Spain—and entirely too many time zones. Gary Bader, chief investment officer of the Alaska Retirement Management Board, returned my call about his allocations to master limited partnerships (see page 16) from Juneau one afternoon. It was just before midnight London time, and luckily I hadn’t spent the evening in the pub.

Perhaps the most vivid piece of on-location reporting we’ve ever published is in this issue:
An account of SALT, the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference in Las Vegas. Kip and I saw the sequins, heard the panelists, and, we admit, tasted the tequila. Let us know what you think.
(And, yes, email is fine.)

—Leanna Orr, Managing Editor