The Ledger
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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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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 …”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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%.”