The Ledger
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Puffer: Consultant Gatekeepers and OCIO Models Block Competitors From Small Pensions
“The power of the consulting community is still very high and was during that period. So we had gatekeepers that made it very difficult for us to really get at the decision makers we needed to get at. And those gatekeepers were at the same time creating their o…”
Puffer: AIMCo invests in high-carbon assets to transition them to green
“We have the flexibility to take on assets that may have a carbon footprint that today doesn't look great in order to be strong stewards of capital to ensure that technology is applied appropriately in those areas to take them from gray to greener.”
Puffer: Pension plans' 50-50 currency hedge approach makes no sense
“Often, pension plans have ended up in the so-called no regrets, fifty-fifty hedge half approach, which really doesn't make sense.”
Puffer: Retail investors are gouged by structured financial products
“The gouging of retail investors, especially through structured products.”
Puffer: Trading floor desk mechanics provide unmatched capital markets insight
“I know how the swap desk interacts with the rates desk, interacts with the currency desk, interacts with the debt origination desk when a corporate deal comes to market, for example. And not many people get that exposure. Its value to me today is huge that I u…”
Puffer: Sell-side trading floors prioritize bank P&L over client returns
“On the trading floor, it really is about P&L. It's about, are you making money today? Did you make money yesterday? How are you making money tomorrow? And who are you making money for? Well, you're not really aiming to make money for the clients, other than in…”
Puffer: CN Investment Division Pioneered Direct Pension Investing Before the Maple Eight
“They were involved in all the private markets doing funds and co-investments and direct investing in ways that You would not expect from a plan that size when you think about American plans of that size at all. Very sophisticated, very similar to the larger Ma…”
Puffer: CN Pension Fund Overall Asset Allocation Was Leveraged at ~15%
“Overall asset allocation ended up being, importantly, leveraged at about 15%.”
Puffer: CN Pension Raised Fixed Income Liability Hedging Above 50%
“The fixed income went from hedging something like 25% of the liabilities to more than 50% of the liabilities.”
Puffer: Asset-liability management principles remain identical across all fund sizes
“Well, pension plan, whether it's three billion or twenty billion or one hundred and sixty billion, where I am today, the principles of asset liability management for the pension plan clients here at AIMCO, they're all the same.”
Puffer: Canadian Pension Compensation Is Close to Private Asset Managers
“I would say the pension space doesn't quite pay at the same level as some of those areas, but it's not too far off.”
Puffer: Canadian Pensions Maintain Non-Political Governance Independent from Government
“We've also got the strength of governance whereby we're separate from government. It's not political here in Canada.”
Puffer: AIMCo prefers performance fees over fixed fees for managers
“We don't mind paying performance fees. We like them better than fixed fees. So that alignment of interest is a powerful tool for us with our external managers.”
Puffer: AIMCo avoids venture capital due to scale and focus
“We don't have much activity in venture capital. That area has just not been a focus for ANCO in a big way, and our scale is not sufficiently large that we really need to reach into that space at this time.”
Puffer: Tail risk hedging has weak external manager alignment
“Tail risk hedging is tricky to do as an external strategy, because it's a bit of a no-win situation. It's basically an insurance policy, no matter how it's structured. Unless there's a crisis where the tail risk pays, you expect it to be something that loses m…”
Puffer: Evaluating external managers is as much about talent management as strategy
“The fundamental piece of assessing external managers is as much the talent and alignment of interest and how they manage talent as it is about the actual strategies and investment process.”
Puffer: Stagflation from policy error is among the toughest portfolio environments
“In terms of the markets themselves, I'm worrying about the risk that the policymakers don't get this right, and that we end up in a stagflationary environment. That's a serious risk. And it's very difficult to steer a portfolio to be really resilient against t…”
Puffer: Renewables and resource investments offer premier inflation hedging
“The diversification can include renewables and resources, as an example, where that's diversification into some commodity price risk, and that can be one of the best hedges against inflation.”
Puffer: Maple Eight developed investment thinking used by GIC and NZ Super
“When you think about New Zealand Super and GIC, some of the European pension plans, much of the thinking that has been put in place in those pension plans has been developed at the Maple Eight and enhanced in those funds tailored to their needs and their gover…”
Puffer: Large Canadian pensions have minimal home bias in return-seeking assets
“We don't have much of a home bias anymore in the large Canadian pension plans. Canada is, call it, three point something percent of GDP globally, and our portfolios now are closer to reflecting that in our return-seeking assets.”
Puffer: USD, yen, and Swiss franc act as crisis tail-risk hedges
“When we think about crisis periods, the US dollar, the yen, Swiss franc, really play a role of tail risk Hedges and natural diversifiers.”
Puffer: Foreign fixed income requires currency hedging while equities should not
“Typically those would get hedged or fixed income like where the volatility of the return stream is low. The currency volatility can swamp that. And usually that's playing an asset liability function in the portfolio. So typically that kind of investment stream…”
Puffer: Investment industry resists specialists shifting asset classes or roles
“This industry doesn't make it easy to shift asset classes, it doesn't make it easy to shift rules when you've become a specialist in something pretty early on and reached a pretty high level pretty early on.”
Puffer: AIMCo manages 17 distinct clients without controlling asset mix decisions
“And at AIMCO, we don't control the strategic asset mix decision. We are not one pool of capital, like Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and others here in Canada. We are more like BCI in British Columbia and the Caisse de Dépoux in Quebec, where we have multiple c…”
Puffer: AIMCo has ~175 investment professionals and is opening Singapore, NYC offices
“I went from having 45 or so investment professionals at CN to now I have about 175, and we're located across the globe. We have offices in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, and London, and we're opening offices in New York and Singapore.”
AIMCo hires former GIC executive to head Singapore office
“So, for example, in Singapore, we've got a new head of Singapore starting in a couple of weeks who's coming to us from GIC”
Puffer: AIMCo's New York office focuses on growing direct private debt
“In private debt and loan, we have a strategy to grow, and that's really the impetus behind our New York office. Is expanding our investments in private debt and loan and increasing the proportion of direct investment there.”
Puffer: AIMCo is splitting alpha and beta in public equities
“In the public markets, primarily internally managed, but in our equity book, for example, we've recently taken an approach of being clearer about the strategies that we have in place for our clients that are separating out alpha and beta more clearly. So we ha…”
AIMCo expects four-to-one direct investment ratio from private credit partners
“We still work with partners, but we also expect something like a four to one ratio of direct investment opportunities. For every dollar that we're putting with a partner.”
Puffer: Opportunistic real estate is less of a direct inflation hedge
“The more opportunistic part of the real estate market is less of a direct inflation hedge.”
AIMCo accesses high-risk markets via strong rule-of-law exporters
“And being careful about gaining exposure to certain higher risk markets indirectly through jurisdictions where the rule of law is strong and perhaps where the companies that we're investing in may be exporters to regions that are a little more challenging to i…”
Puffer: Subordinates often mistake a leader's casual musings for directives
“It's easy as a leader to think out loud from time to time without noticing that people really listen to you when you think out loud, and oftentimes they'll go off and do things because they think it's what you want when all you were doing is wondering about so…”
Marlene Puffer: Fixed income investing forces focus on downside risk
“Coming up through the fixed income side is interesting because it combines the macro view where it's all the macro forces that influence interest rates with the credit view where it's very micro forces that influence credit quality. It's where macro and micro …”