Disclosure
Alderbas: PIFSS restricts Asian allocations strictly to market-neutral funds
“In the US, it's all about execution speed and technology, and we're going to go with the startups. We're only going to go occasionally with the fundamentals that have an edge or something depreciated. Asia, we said we're going to go only with the market neutra…”
Assertion Supported
Alderbas: PIFSS managed $100B and held 40% in cash upon his arrival
“A hundred billion. And they were sitting at 40% cash.”
Disclosure
Alderbas: PIFSS redeemed 60% of legacy alternatives portfolio after audit
“We redeemed 60% of the book.”
Opinion
Alderbas: Asian equities only make sense via market-neutral strategies
“All right, we can't label it as Asia because every country has its different culture and way of doing things, so we have to change our approach and realize that there it's a beta market, it's a volatile market, and it would only make sense on a net basis to do…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alderbas: Kuwait Fund held 30 fund-of-funds simultaneously
“We had at any point in time, 30 funder funds.”
Disclosure
Alderbas: PIFSS replaced commingled fund-of-funds with bespoke SMAs
“The first thing I did here at PIFS was instead of going with Commonwealth Fund of Funds, we went with SMAs and SMAs with leading alternative asset managers that firstly act as extensions to my team and my book and whatever we can do Directly, because of the gu…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alderbas: PIFSS portfolio had only one recognizable line item out of 80
“I look at the book and out of 80 line items that they showed me, I only knew one.”
Disclosure
Alderbas: PIFSS refuses to settle for second-tier managers if top-tier is unavailable
“So if we don't get the allocation today, it's fine. We won't go to a second-tier manager because we didn't get the top-tier.”
Disclosure
Alderbas: PIFSS caps portfolio sleeves at 30 holdings to limit fees
“We don't want to be over-diversified, because then it's going to be costly, and we're going to be blaming the high fees and everything around it. So we said, the max we're going to have in any one bucket or portfolio is 30, right?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alderbas: One PIFSS market-neutral position equals its entire activist bucket
“One single position in my market neutral bucket is the equivalent of all of the line items I have in the activist bucket.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alderbas: PIFSS alternatives book achieved 7% return and positive 3% alpha
“Almost four years later, so by the end of December, the book collectively had a seven percent return on a six percent volatility. So that's a sharp of one. And the beta to the HFI
Fund weighted composite came down from 77 basis points to 63. What was amazing w…”
Disclosure
Alderbas: PIFSS holds minority stakes in 14 GPs and 6 revenue-share agreements
“So with regards to the strategic relationships that we have 14 GPs, Where we own five to 30% of that specific business, and we have six businesses where we have revenue share out of that”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alderbas: GP stakes contributed 5% of PIFSS's 12% alternative return in 2020
“In 2020, my book delivered a 12% performance. Of that 12%, five percent came from the strategic book.”
Disclosure
PIFSS restricts esoteric credit investments exclusively to closed-end fund formats
“All esoteric social credit is going to strictly be done through close ended fund formats. And that is because While we're long-term investors, we don't want the market to take advantage of us or other investors. We're only going to do investment-grade social c…”
Disclosure
PIFSS splits TMT allocations into 70% hedge funds and 30% co-investments
“What we did was we partnered with one of the best TMT managers, and we like the portfolio and the hedge fund specifically, but we felt that we could up the volatility there, and what we did was that we said, 70% of that book will be in hedge funds, and 30% is …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alderbas: Kuwait Fund beat the HFRI Fund-of-Funds benchmark year after year
“And that created certainly turbulence, but at the midst of it, and throughout the whole program, we had one single benchmark, and it was the HFRI Fundafund benchmark. And we beat that benchmark year and year out.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alderbas: Kuwait Fund had roughly 900 line items with ~50% overlap
“So when we first started, we had roughly 900 individual line items. Overlap there was probably 50%.”
Disclosure
Alderbas: PIFSS completes internal reviews before consulting partners' research
“So any manager has a direct allocation, even if it's the biggest in the world, has to go through a defined process, review process, and that review process means reaching out those fund of fund partners, looking at their research, Papers, but only after we're …”
Disclosure
Alderbas: Inherited PIFSS alternatives book held 80 items sized 0.5% to 13%
“So the first thing that happened was when I took over the book, I was given a book of 80 line items. The biggest position was a 13% position and the smallest was 50 basis points.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alderbas: PIFSS expanded GP acquisition strategy from 6% to 14% of NAV
“When we moved over with the 40 line items that we took from the open-ended book,
We asked the private equity team to give us the GP acquisition strategy, and that strategy at that time made six percent of our book, of NAV. We grew that book to 14% of NAV, 20% …”
Disclosure
Alderbas plans to increase PIFSS's Asia allocation from 3% to 15-20%
“And for me, I want Asia to be 15 to 20% of my book over the next five years, coming out of a three percent position today.”
