May 4, 2012 at 9:59am

Redesigned P&I Research Center ranking pages have ‘show all' and ‘total' functionality

As part of the P&I Research Center infrastructure project, we recently redesigned the ranking pages. The pages have a new style that makes it easier to distinguish different rows and columns. The speed at which pages load also has significantly increased. At the bottom of each page, there is now the option to show all records at one time, not just 25. Also at the bottom of each page, we have started to display totals for all dollar amount columns. The speed at which organization profile pages load has also increased materially.

May 4, 2012 at 9:43am

P&I Research Center now offers multinational DB plan sponsor information

A new data set covering multinational corporations' defined benefit assets, liabilities, actuarial assumptions and asset allocations has been added to the Pensions & Investments Research Center. The universe contains 44 companies with around $800 billion in defined benefit assets. This helps complete the DB picture for many of the biggest corporations in the P&I 1,000. For example, P&I lists Exxon Mobil's U.S. defined benefit assets as of Sept. 30, 2011, at $10.5 billion. The new data set has both Exxon's U.S. assets and its $17.1 billion in non-U.S. defined benefit assets.

There are four years of data available. All information that was in a foreign currency has been converted to U.S. dollars as of the fiscal date. In the future, we will add more detail by providing country and regional breakouts when provided by the companies.

An analysis of the data was published in the April 30, 2012, issue of P&I.

May 2, 2012 at 10:30am

P&IQ focus group to spur further improvements

Pensions & Investments recently conducted a focus group of sales and marketing professionals at money management firms to evaluate P&IQ. Minor changes have already been made: Column titles have been made more descriptive, and the mandate type has been moved to the home screen, among other changes. In the coming days and months, we will make additional small and significant changes to improve P&IQ. Examples include improving the navigation, and enhancing the fields and filters we display.

April 3, 2012 at 2:51pm

New ‘related news' section in P&I Research Center profiles

Using Pensions & Investments' new search engine we have added a new “related news” section for firm profiles in the Research Center. The left navigation now includes a section for general, people and searches/hires/terminations news items. The news is about specific institutions and is sorted in date order.

April 3, 2012 at 1:01pm

Alternative managers hired the most in Q1 2012 as measured by P&IQ

Hires by institutional investors more than doubled in the first quarter of 2012 as compared to the same period last year as tracked by P&IQ. There were 348 hires in the most recent quarter as compared to 166 in the year prior.

The bulk of the hires came in alternatives, which represented 208 hires for $17.161 billion. Private equity and hedge funds represented 74% of the asset flow with private equity receiving $6.504 billion and hedge funds receiving $6.175 billion. Real assets and real estate accounted for the majority of the rest with $2.61 billion and $1.847 billion, respectively.

Blackstone, Oaktree Capital Management, AQR Capital Management LLC, BlueCrest Capital Management and KKR won the most business with a combined $3.077 billion.

For all of the details on Q1 2012 hires, visit P&IQ.

March 30, 2012 at 2:54pm

Enhanced Pensions & Investments Research Center search now live

The Pensions & Investments Research Center search now includes more than 450 search terms for various asset classes and other commonly searched phrases. The terms will allow users to go directly to the desired ranking page. For instance, searching for “defined contribution” will generate five results: top DC plan sponsors; top DC money managers; top DC record keepers; top DC consultants; and top passive DC money managers.

March 14, 2012 at 11:08am

PennPSERS' shift to risk parity could benefit Bridgewater and AQR

Pennsylvania Public School Employees' Retirement System's creation of a 5% target allocation to risk parity was recently reported by Pensions & Investments. With assets of $47.9 billion, this would represent around a $2.4 billion allocation to risk parity. Bridgewater already manages $700 million in risk party for PennPSERS, and was moved to the new allocation. This leaves around $1.7 billion unallocated to the new allocation. In the past 15 months, P&I has reported three risk-parity hires with more than 90% of the money going to Bridgewater and AQR. The $110 billion Teacher Retirement System of Texas, Austin, and the $83.3 billion State of Wisconsin Investment Board, Madison, both hired Bridgewater and AQR who split a total of $1.1 billion combined from both pension funds. The $2 billion San Joaquin County Employees' Retirement Association, Stockton, Calif., hired Bridgewater and The Clifton Group Investment Management Co. to manage a risk-parity strategy. Each manager received $100 million.

To see the full details on the risk party hires, visit P&IQ.

March 13, 2012 at 1:32pm

Enhanced P&I Research Center search

In the near future, users of the P&I Research Center search will be able to search for terms, not just organizations. The enhanced Research Center search will automatically display relevant ranking pages. For example, a search for “403” will display rankings for both plan sponsors with 403(b) plans and money managers with 403(b) AUM.

March 9, 2012 at 10:32am

Active/passive/enhanced details to be added to P&IQ

Later this year, P&IQ's searches, hires and terminations will include an active, passive or enhanced qualifier, when available. Alternative mandates are assumed to be active. In 2011, there were 152 traditional active mandate hires for $28.892 billion. There were 20 traditional passive hires for $10.022 billion and three traditional enhanced hires for a total of $1.047 billion during the same period.