Allianz US Large Cap Value: opportunities in US equities beyond the magnificent seven

Value and US equities are not always words that fit well together, but James Dorment and the US Large Cap Value team at Voya Investment Management, supplemented by their focus on Excess Capital Yield, have been able to outperform the Russell 1000, net of fees, by c.200bps per annum since 2008. Jim will provide insight into his team’s approach to investing in this part of the US market and discuss why they feel positive about its prospects going forward.

James Dorment CFA

Co-Head of Large Cap Fundamental Research, Head of Value, and Portfolio Manager

James Dorment is co-head of large cap fundamental research and serves as the head of value and a portfolio manager for the large cap value strategies at Voya Investment Management. Jim also covers the consumer discretionary sector. Prior to joining Voya, he was a senior research analyst from Columbia Management. Previously, he worked at U.S. Trust analysing and investing in a broad range of industries in both public and private equity markets. Jim earned a BA in economics from Bates College and is a CFA® Charterholder.

Capturing Climate Transition Opportunities in Global Equities

Allspring believes ‘leaving returns on the table’ is a common misconception in climate equity investing. Their approach seeks to deliver both financial and climate outcomes in a core global equity portfolio. Peter Weidner will discuss how they drive alpha using their innovative bottom-up stock selection approach that blends quantitative tools and fundamental insights to amplify their ability to consistently select winning stocks. Identifying climate transition winners does not necessarily mean low carbon companies today, but companies that will win in a low carbon world of tomorrow. The goal is to build a resilient all-star portfolio of stocks that play well together, not just a portfolio of all-stars and they will discuss looking beyond traditional models to prevent compromising returns to invest in Climate Transition Global Equity.

Peter Weidner

Senior Portfolio Manager, Head of Systematic Edge Equity

Peter Weidner is head of Allspring’s Systematic Edge Equity team. The team researches, designs, and manages equity portfolios, including climate transition global equity strategies. Peter joined Allspring from its predecessor firm, Wells Fargo Asset Management. Peter has extensive experience in building and managing factor-based portfolios within equities, FI, FX, and environmental, social, and governance. Prior to joining the firm, he worked as head of advanced beta at Schroders, responsible for the research, development, and management of systematic investment strategies and solutions for institutional and intermediary channels. Preceding Schroders, Peter held roles at Auriel Capital, the University of Florida Investment Corporation, and Deutsche Asset Management. He began his investment industry career in 2004. Peter earned bachelor’s degrees in both economics and finance from the University of Florida.

IG Credit – making every basis point count

Coolabah (est. 2011 with +6bn USD in FUM) are cash bonds experts - playing mean reversion in IG credit through active trading and in-depth fundamental research.

Price discovery in OTC credit remains opaque (like stocks before exchanges existed). Coolabah’s unique process exploits mispricing in the highest quality, most liquid investment-grade bonds in order to generate excess returns primarily through spread compression as opposed to duration or carry.

Chris Joye

Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager, Coolabah Capital Investments

Chris Joye founded Coolabah Capital in 2011 and leads the portfolio management effort that has produced one of Australia’s top short-term fixed-interest capabilities. He is responsible for investment decisioning, portfolio management, research and asset pricing, and general business management, running a large team of portfolio managers and analysts. Chris is a Contributing Editor for The Australian Financial Review, a leading economist and policy advisor and previously worked at Goldman Sachs, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and founded Rismark International. He has advised both Australian and US governments and studied at the University of Sydney and Cambridge University.

Morgan Stanley Global Macro Fund: Diversification and consistent excess returns from non-traditional sources

A Macro fund that has been long foreign currencies vs USD and short credit spreads for the last 5 years and still generated a 0.5 Sharpe ratio. How can that be?! With a strategy launched in 1996 from non-traditional beginnings, Global Macro seeks to generate alpha primarily from long and short sovereign positions across currencies, sovereign credit, and interest rates. During the session Kyle Lee will tell the story of how New Zealand’s big-bang reforms in the late 1980s started it all, as well as highlight how investors have used the fund to diversify portfolios from traditional stock and bond allocations and deliver consistent risk-adjusted returns.

Kyle Lee

Co-Head of Emerging Markets

Kyle Lee is the Co-Head of Emerging Markets and portfolio manager on the team’s flagship Global Macro Fund as well as the EM Debt strategies. He is responsible for co-leading the team of investment professionals based in Boston, Washington, D.C., London, and Singapore, as well as for buy and sell decisions, portfolio construction, and risk management for assets in emerging and frontier markets. He began his career in the investment management industry with Eaton Vance in 2007. Kyle earned a BA from Wesleyan University and is a CFA charterholder.

High-Conviction Global Equity: The Alpha Blueprint

Join Rob Hinchliffe, PineBridge Investments Global Focus Equity Portfolio Manager, to learn how a non-consensus approach leads to a highly differentiated, quality-focused portfolio. Global Focus Equity seeks to generate its alpha from stock-specific sources, avoiding sector, style, and other top-down macro tilts. The result is a concentrated portfolio paradoxically high in active share and low in benchmark risk, with a robust track record through widely ranging market conditions.

Rob Hinchliffe, CFA

Portfolio Manager, Head of Global Sector Cluster Research

Rob Hinchliffe joined the firm in 2008 and serves as a Portfolio Manager for the Global Focus strategy. He is also the Head of Global Sector Cluster Research and is responsible for bringing together the firm’s worldwide research across global industries to drive investment insights. Previously, Rob was a Senior Equity Analyst at UBS, where he was recognised by StarMine for stock selection, and began his investing career in finance at Bear Stearns in 1997. Rob received his BA in Economics from Rutgers College and his MBA in Finance from New York University. He is a CFA charterholder.

Are we in an opportunity sweet spot for European value stocks?

Since the start of the year European investors’ expectations of a more dovish ECB have boosted growth names at the expense of value with the MSCI Europe ex UK Growth index nearly matching the year to date returns of the top-heavy MSCI USA equivalent. This extreme performance divergence has resulted in a valuation gap of nearly 14x between the Growth and Value indices, with the former trading roughly 40% above its 20-year median, while European value stocks are currently cheaper than their historical average. Matt Ring, a co-portfolio manager on Pzena’s Europe ex-UK Focused Value UCITS, will discuss how today’s backdrop is skewed in favour of value, and how they’re discovering many high-quality franchises trading at highly discounted valuations.

Matthew J. Ring

Principal, Director of Research and Portfolio Manager

Matthew Ring is a co-portfolio manager for the International Small Cap Focused Value, European Value and Global Small Cap Focused services. Matthew became a member of the firm in 2010. Prior to joining Pzena Investment Management, he was a senior manager with consulting firm Simat Helliesen & Eichner, providing due diligence for investments in the Industrials and Aerospace & Defence sectors. Matthew began his career with General Electric Aircraft Engines as a design engineer and holds a patent on his GEnx compressor case design for the Boeing 787. He earned a BS magna cum laude in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University and an MBA from Columbia Business School, graduating with honours.

Enhanced Indexing: a smart approach to capturing the equity risk premium

One of the significant shifts in recent decades has been the rise of passive solutions. Despite their indisputable merits, including low costs and transparency, they face challenges such as lagging behind benchmarks net of costs, being prone to arbitrage, and lacking flexibility. In this session, Wilma de Groot will introduce the compelling alternative of Enhanced Indexing for capturing the equity risk premium by blending the benefits of passive and active investing. Wilma will discuss how this time-tested approach focuses on stable excess returns and limited relative risk, as well as provide insight into how it is successfully being implemented.

Wilma de Groot

Head of Core Quant Equities and Deputy Head of Quant Equity

Wilma de Groot is Head of Core Quant Equities, Head of Factor Investing Equities and Deputy Head of Quant Equity. She is responsible for quant equity strategies and specialises in asset pricing anomalies, portfolio construction and sustainability integration. She has published in various academic publications including the Journal of Impact and ESG Investing, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Empirical Finance and the Financial Analysts Journal. She is a guest lecturer at several universities. Wilma joined Robeco as a Quant Researcher in 2001. Wilma has a PhD in Finance from Erasmus University Rotterdam and holds a Master’s in Econometrics from Tilburg University. She is a CFA® Charterholder.

Risk factor diversification within high active share portfolios

Scott Weber, Vaughan Nelson’s Lead Senior Portfolio Manager, will introduce the Select strategy and Vaughan Nelson’s approach to risk factor diversification within high active share, concentrated portfolios.
Vaughan Nelson employs a fundamental, research driven approach to high active share, concentrated portfolios. As part of the portfolio construction process, risk factors are considered and neutralised in an effort isolate return generation via security selection. Today, the result is a portfolio with 25-30 holdings with greater risk factor diversification than the S&P 500 while demonstrating long term outperformance through cycle.

Scott Weber, CFA

Senior Portfolio Manager

Scott Weber is a Senior Portfolio Manager of Vaughan Nelson’s Equity Products. Scott has 28 years of experience in investment management and financial analysis. He also holds the designation of being a Chartered Financial Analyst. Scott joined Vaughan Nelson in 2003. Previously, he was the Vice President for Investment Banking and Senior Associate for Investment Banking at RBC Capital Markets; an Associate in Investment Banking at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown; and a Treasury Analyst at Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. He earned a Master in Business Administration from Tulane University’s AB Freeman School of Business and a Bachelor of Science from the University of the South.