Disclosure
Oxford Endowment operates without a policy portfolio, flexing equities between 45-80%
“The way our asset allocation today is we don't have a policy portfolio. We have a group of broad asset groups we call risk assets, and we have ranges around which we can move them. So we have equities, and that can be anywhere between 45 to 80% of the whole po…”
Opinion
Robertson dismisses commodities as an inflation hedge, calling the concept "nonsense"
“We had again a little flurry with this whole idea that Commodities were good inflation hedge, but we just figured out that was nonsense. So we got rid of those.”
Opinion
Robertson calls separating ESG from core active management "bizarre"
“I think that if you try and separate it out and make it a different activity, I think that's just bizarre. But if you take it back to one of the reasons I think that investors struggle with it today, I think it's because truly active equity managers know the b…”
Disclosure
Oxford Endowment terminated an investment manager for launching undisclosed business lines
“He raised a lot of money and we found him in other areas through other managers, That that's not why we'd employed him to do that. And so we found him creating different business lines and also not being entirely honest with us what he was doing. It wasn't cri…”
Insight
Robertson: Sterling investors should not hedge dollar exposure in stress periods
“What you have to understand for a sterling investor in times of stress, it's good to own dollars. It's not good to hedge your currency because a big cash drain.”
Insight
Robertson: Short-term instruments make hedging long-duration foreign assets difficult
“When you're investing long-term money, it's quite difficult, because the instruments you've got to hedge currency are very short-term, whereas you're hedging long-duration assets, so there was never a correct formula, to be honest.”
Disclosure
Wellcome Trust invested $10M in Benchmark's first venture fund
“One of the first venture investments we made was the guys at Benchmark were in their first fund. I think, welcome, we had ten million dollars in that.”
Assertion Contradicted
Robertson: Oxford's central endowment was only £400M before OUEM was established
“And its endowment at that point was four hundred million pounds after a thousand years.”
Disclosure
Robertson: Oxford endowment pool excludes any asset that cannot be sold
“And so I said nothing can be in the endowment pool that I can't sell.”
Disclosure
Oxford Endowment seeds emerging managers on a three-year 'farm team'
“We also have a little part of our portfolio which we call the farm team, and that might be somebody who's just exceptional, might be super young, who just is really highly regarded by perhaps people that have mentored them. They're trying to figure out how to …”
Disclosure
Robertson: OUEM sizes top manager at 8-9% and farm team at 0.5-1%
“Biggest single equity manager is about eight or nine percent of the total portfolio. So they would probably be anywhere between sort of, I would say, 50 basis points to one percent.”
Disclosure
Robertson: OUEM internal team makes all investment decisions, not committee
“OUEM, Oxford University Endowment Management, is a regulated manager, so we make all the investment decisions. Our investment committee are there for guidance, policy, a fantastic resource to have, but effectively, we as the team make the decisions.”
Disclosure
Robertson: Oxford endowment integrates hedge funds directly into global equity portfolio
“We don't have a hedge fund portfolio. We will have hedge fund link managers in our global equity portfolio.”
Insight
Robertson: Manager fee opacity is a bigger issue than high fees
“I think my issue is when people are not transparent on the fees, as opposed to the absolute fee levels.”
Disclosure
Robertson: Oxford Endowment has 0.6% portfolio exposure to fossil fuel extractors
“I think we've got .6 for our whole book in fossil fuel extractors, and that hasn't been because that's actually just been a very long-term sensible business decision, but the reality is we all still use fossil fuels.”
Disclosure
Robertson: OUEM requires client investment committees to lock up capital for five years
“We get inbound inquiries, but we have to convince investment committees to give us their money and lock their money up for five years.”
Disclosure
Oxford Endowment refuses to track or report quarterly performance numbers
“We do not report quarterly numbers. I couldn't even tell you what my quarterly numbers were.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Robertson: Wellcome Trust was the only UK institutional VC allocator in early 1990s
“We invested in venture capital, and you know, I must confess, I didn't really know what it was, but we'd make trips to the valley in Boston, and we were the only UK investor at that time, so we were novel.”
Disclosure
Robertson: Oxford Endowment holds 20-25% private equity and roughly 52-53% public equity
“So about private equity sort of varies anywhere between 20 to 25%. And so the rest tends to be our risk appetite. It's probably more reflected in the public equity exposure of that. So our public equity today is around 50, I think 52, 53%.”
Disclosure
Robertson: Oxford Endowment holds UK strategic land for 15-20 year conversions
“One in the UK is long-term holding of what we call strategic land. And that is taking an asset that is currently used for, say, industrial use, and particularly in large metropolitan areas in the UK, huge pressure on housing. And so you can see that this indus…”
Disclosure
Robertson: Oxford endowment holds no plain vanilla credit, allocates 6-7% to specialist credit
“We have no vanilla, or plain vanilla, as you American say, credit in the endowment fund at all. It's all specialist credit, and that tends to be with groups who can invest globally, public, private, semi-distressed, stressed situations. It's quite a small port…”
Assertion Supported
Robertson: Wellcome Trust had £2.5B in cash when launching investment team
“They literally had two and a half billion pounds in the bank and a blank sheet of paper.”
