NewsmakersNovember 18, 2024

Versatility in a Time of Change

A new CIO award recognizes collaboration, innovation and leadership in an evolving industry.

Reported by Amy Resnick

Chief Investment Officer has always focused on the dynamics of institutional asset allocation, and those dynamics are changing. This year, with that in mind, we are presenting a new periodic award—the Versatility Award—to two industry leaders whose careers have changed as a result of the ongoing transformation.

We are presenting the inaugural CIO Versatility Awards to two leaders in the industry. One winner is Ernie Caballero, who, along with his team, joined Goldman Sachs Asset Management in May, when Goldman Sachs was hired to run the pension funds of UPS, where Cabellero had been CIO. The other winner is Jeanmarie Grisi, CIO of pension investments at Nokia, which last month outsourced its pension investing to Mercer.

The awards will be presented on December 10 at CIO’s Industry Innovation Awards Dinner in New York City.

Caballero and Grisi have been described by peers as possessing the characteristics CIO has honored with our awards for the last 14 years. During their tenures, they have demonstrated leadership in innovation, talent development and collaboration, and we think those tasks will be even more important—and challenging—as institutional investing’s evolution continues.

In 2024, as corporate pension funds worldwide are increasingly being sold to insurance companies or outsourced to discretionary investment managers, the pace of change feels like it is gathering speed. What will not change is the need for people to be thoughtful and engaged with the reinvention of institutional asset allocation, regardless of who is making the decisions.

Our honorees exemplify that approach.

Caballero, who spent 35 years at UPS and this year transitioned his in-house investment team to GSAM, is coming to terms with changes in the industry that he sees as an inflection point for pensions overall. He points to the demise of internal pension fund management in U.S. companies as a signal that defined benefit pensions no longer are a material part of the country’s retirement platform. As a result, he says the future will need to include the best aspects of DB and defined contribution systems.

Grisi, who plans to retire next year from Nokia after more than 25 years, continues to chair the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s Advisory Committee and is contemplating how an industry of colleagues who often have problem-solved together will evolve when OCIO providers might see competitors, rather than collaborators, among those managing the largest pools of pension assets.

These leaders are the kinds of creative, thoughtful people the industry is going to need to continue attracting the best and brightest to the challenging field of institutional asset allocation. We believe both our honorees—through their thoughtfulness and desire to contemplate what comes next for the retirement and allocator industries—exemplify the versatility this award celebrates.