Amy Flikerski, Head of External Portfolio Management at CPP Investments - the C$600bn Canadian state pension fund - joins Alan Dunne in this episode to discuss allocating capital to emerging and established hedge funds. They delve into the evolution of the hedge fund industry from the perspective of an allocator and particularly how the growth of the large multi-manager multi-strats has impacted hedge fund allocating. Amy discusses the role of the External Manager Allocations in the context of CPP Investment’s overall portfolio and some of the key considerations from a top down and bottom up perspective when the portfolio is constructed. Amy also highlights how CPP Investments evaluates emerging managers, what makes a great hedge fund manager and also offers valuable advice for hedge fund managers when engaging with allocators.
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Episode TimeStamps:
03:02 - Introduction to Amy Flikerski
08:02 - How they think about manager selection
09:28 - How do they categorize their strategies?
11:40 - How they assess their investment objective
13:07 - How they manage risk
14:29 - How the global macro environment affects them
15:41 - How they manage a billion dollar portfolio
17:11 - How the hedge fund industry have evolved
19:13 - Is there a place for multi-manager pods?
20:47 - A war for talent
22:34 - How they approach internal vs external management
26:34 - How is their team set up?
28:48 - What are they looking for when assessing managers?
30:54 - Making allocation to emerging managers
33:10 - What characterize their managers?
34:48 - Assessing the scalability of a strategy
37:29 - What makes a good allocator
39:23 - Advice for independant hedge funds
41:40 - What types of early stage managers do they look out for?
42:55 - How they approach their portfolio construction
45:25 - How they manage fund constraints
46:48 - What is their typical ticket size?
47:31 - Reaching the right level of transparency
49:46 - Characteristics of a succesful discretionary manager
51:14 - Managing drawdowns
52:56 - Their decision-making process
55:58 - How they approach commodities
57:33 - Advice for other managers
01:00:18 - Advice for people coming into the industry
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