In this live recording from the Fiduciary Investors Symposium, hosted by Top1000funds.com in Singapore in March 2025, Professor Kotkin unpacks what’s next for the US and the world
In the midst of the great power rivalry between the US and China, “we need all the help we can get to carve out a future that works well for all of us” says Danny Quah, Dean and Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, in a talk examining the future of the global economy and the role of Asia. Listen here.
Investors are currently facing the end of uncertainty around assumptions they have made for decades, and need to shore up their portfolios with greater inflation protection, more active management, and by fostering innovation, according to chief strategist at the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario, Nick Chamie who spoke to Amanda White in the Fiduciary Investors Series podcast.
As carbon emissions continue to rise investors need to innovate on the nature of investment mandates says Colin le Duc, a founding partner of Generation Investment Management. He says real world impact is going in the wrong direction, even though sustainable investing is booming, and the credibility of transition plans is under scrutiny.
About Professor Julian Allwood Julian Allwood is Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge. From 2009-13 he held an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship, to explore Material Efficiency as a climate mitigation strategy – delivering material services with less new material. This led to publication in 2012 of the book “Sustainable Materials: with both eyes open” - listed by Bill Gates as “one of the best six books I read in 2015.” Julian was a Lead Author of the 5th Assessm...
About Professor Sir David King Professor Sir David King is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, University of Cambridge; Founder and Chair of the Centre for ClimateRepair in the University; Chair of the Climate Crisis advisory Group; an Affiliate Partner of SYSTEMIQ Limited; Senior Strategy Adviser to the President of Rwanda and founder member of the Clean Growth Leadership Network, CGLN. He served as Founding Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, 2008-...
About Warwick McKibbin Professor Warwick McKibbin, AO, FASSA is Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA) in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University (ANU). He is also Director of Policy Engagement, and ANU Node Leader, The ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR). He is an ANU Public Policy Fellow; a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences; a Distinguished Public Policy Fell...
What is the Fiduciary Investors series? The COVID-19 global health and economic crisis has highlighted the need for leadership and capital to be urgently targeted towards the vulnerabilities in the global economy. Through conversations with academics and asset owners, the Fiduciary Investors Podcast Series is a forward looking examination of the changing dynamics in the global economy, what a sustainable recovery looks like and how investors are positioning their portfolios. The much-loved event...
About Stephen Kotkin Stephen Kotkin is the John P Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is the co-director of the program in history and the practice of diplomacy and the director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. He established the Princeton department’s Global History initiative and workshop, and teaches the graduate seminar on global history since the 1950s. Professor Kotkin received his PhD from the University of...
About Joseph Stiglitz Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is also the co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and the chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute. A recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), he is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former member and chair...
About Marcie Frost Marcie Frost joined CalPERS as chief executive officer (CEO) in October 2016. She is the ninth CEO and second woman to head America's largest pension fund. As CEO, Marcie oversees an annual budget of $1.8 billion, an experienced team of 2,800 professionals, and three lines of business for the fund: pensions, health benefits, and investments. CalPERS administers a defined benefit retirement system for more than 1.9 million California public sector workers and their families. It...
About William Nordhaus William Nordhaus was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico (which is part of the United States). He completed his undergraduate work at Yale University in 1963 and received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1967 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. He has been on the faculty of Yale University since 1967 and has been Full Professor of Economics since 1973 and also is Professor in Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Professor Nordhaus lives in ...
About Sharan Burrow Sharan Burrow was elected General Secretary of the ITUC at its Second World Congress in Vancouver, June 2010. Prior to this, she held the position of ITUC President since its Founding Congress in Vienna (November 2006) and the position of ICFTU President since its 18th World Congress in Miyazaki (November 2004). She is the first woman to have held any of these positions. Sharan was born in 1954 in Warren, a small town in western NSW, into a family with a long history of invol...
About Philip Duffy Dr. Philip Duffy is a physicist who has devoted nearly 30 years to using science to address to the societal challenge of climate change. As a former Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, he has helped shape domestic and international climate policy, US global change research, and was involved in international climate negotiations. Dr. Duffy often engages policy- and decision-makers, and serves on committees of the National Academy of Sciences. He is particularly interested ...
About Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem is a writer, political activist, and feminist organizer. She was a founder of New York and Ms. magazines, and is the author of The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off , My Life on the Road , Moving Beyond Words , Revolution from Within , and Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions , all published in the United States, and in India, As If Women Matter . She co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Ms. Foundation for Women, the F...
About Simon Pilcher Simon Pilcher was appointed the chief executive of USS Investment Management in May 2019. He started his career in asset management in 1987 at Morgan Grenfell before moving to Prudential in 1998, a year before it acquired M&G Investments. At M&G Prudential, he led the fixed income and alternatives businesses for two decades before being asked to become chair of real estate with a combined team of over 500 employees and around £160 billion in assets. He was also a memb...
About Stephen Kotkin Stephen Kotkin is the John P Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is the co-director of the program in history and the practice of diplomacy and the director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. He established the Princeton department’s Global History initiative and workshop, and teaches the graduate seminar on global history since the 1950s. He also holds a joint appointment in the Woodrow Wilson ...
About Jeff Wendling Jeff Wendling became president and chief executive officer (CEO) of HOOPP on April 1, 2020. He has 30 years of investment management experience and has been with HOOPP since 1998. Prior to his appointment as CEO, he had served as HOOPP’s executive vice president and chief investment officer since 2018. Before that, he spent more than six years as co-CIO. He began his career at HOOPP as a senior portfolio manager on the public equities team. Wendling is a proven leader of a la...
About Andrew Parry Parry is head of sustainable investment at Newton Investment Management. He was previously head of sustainable investing at Hermes Investment Management, developing the firm’s impact investing capabilities, and aligning its funds to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He previously held roles as head of equities and impact investing at Hermes, and before this as CEO of Hermes Sourcecap Limited. He has over 30 years of equity investment expertise, having also held roles as CI...
About Michelle Ostermann Michelle Ostermann is responsible for the overall management and continuing development of the Railway Pension Scheme’s investment management capability. Her primary focus is to ensure it attracts and retains the best possible talent to achieve the long-term investment goals. She joined Railpen in January 2019 as chief fiduciary officer and was appointed managing director in December 2019. She has 25 years’ experience in the investment, insurance and pension industries. ...
About Ash Williams Ash Williams has earned a reputation for being able to head into the stormiest of investment markets and still show positive returns that outperform benchmarks and impress colleagues. As executive director and chief investment officer for the Florida State Board of Administration, Williams is responsible for managing approximately $200 billion in assets, including those of the Florida Retirement System, the fifth largest public pension fund in the United States. The fund provi...
About John Claisse John Claisse joined Albourne in July 1996, relocated from London to San Francisco in July 2013 and became Albourne Group CEO in August 2015. He is an equity partner and member of Albourne’s executive committee and also chairs the firm’s corporate planning council, which comprises Albourne’s function and region heads. Claisse helped develop the firm’s proprietary risk analytics and was formerly the senior analyst for quantitative equity strategies and multi-strategy hedge funds...
About Ben Meng Yu (Ben) Meng rejoined CalPERS in January 2019 as chief investment officer (CIO). He oversees an investment office of nearly 400 employees and manages investment portfolios of roughly $400 billion, including the Public Employees’ Retirement Fund and affiliate funds. Yu, a U.S. citizen born in China, returned to CalPERS after more than three years as the deputy CIO at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), the largest asset pool in the world with assets under manageme...
About Geoffrey Rubin Geoff Rubin is responsible for overall fund-level investment strategy and heads the total portfolio management (TPM) department – the operational arm of CPP Investments’ investment planning committee, with overall management accountability for the oversight and management of the fund’s investment portfolio. He joined CPP Investments in 2011, with the inception of TPM, and has helped shape its growth and evolution, and to define and execute CPP Investments’ total portfolio ap...
About Esther Duflo Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment and governance. Pro...
In this Fiduciary Investors series podcast Amanda White talks to Joel Prohin who is director of the portfolio management division at Caisse des Depots in France. Prohin heads the portfolio management team and is responsible for €140 billion across fixed income, equities, real estate and private equity. We talk about how Caisse is positioning the portfolio during this time of uncertainty and how sustainability as a long term issue, can be prioritised at a time when short term risks, and survival ...
In this Fiduciary Investors series podcast Amanda White talks to Iain Begg, Professsorial Research Fellow at the European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, about the economic and social turmoil of COVID-19 and the robustness of the EU to deal with this economically. About Iain Begg Iain Begg is a Professorial Research Fellow at the European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. His main research work is on the political economy of European integr...
In this Fiduciary Investors Series podcast Amanda White talks to Henry Richards, who is the project lead on the Future of the Corporation at the British Academy. The discussion is part of our exploration of purposeful companies and the premise that we need to redefine business in the 21stcentury to build trust between corporations, investors and society. About Henry Richards Henry Richards, who is the project lead on the Future of the Corporation at the British Academy, the UK’s national body fo...
In this Fiduciary Investors Series podcast Amanda White talks to chief executive of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, Janine Guillot, about stakeholder capitalism and the role investors can play in shifting the dial. We discuss the value SASB can play as a tool for decision making and how stakeholder issues can impact performance. Guillot says the key lever to help re-establish trust between business and society is that companies measure, manage, and reward environmental and social ...
