Boca Raton, FL (PRWEB) March 17, 2014
This year’s CIO Roundtable at The Pension Bridge Annual brings forth an impressive group of pension plan CIOs that have garnered the attention of the institutional investor industry. Paul Ballard representing Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Company, Jon Breautigam of Michigan Department from Treasury, Rodney June of Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System, David Kushner of Los Angeles County Employees Retirement, and John Skjervem on behalf of Oregon State Treasury manage a combined total of just over $250 billion. Moderating the panel will be Rob Feckner, the President of the Board of Administration at California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest United States pension fund with assets totaling $283 billion under management.
The Pension Bridge Annual Conference will be an educational gathering of the most highly regarded leaders from the institutional investment community. The conference will be held at The Four Seasons Hotel, San Francisco on April 22nd and 23rd, 2014.
Among the panel topics the Chief Investment Officers will be discussing is unfunded pension liabilities. Pension Liabilities is a growing industry crisis that has recently caught the attention of billionaire investor Warren Buffet. Last week, Mr. Buffet warned of his strong belief that more bad news is on the horizon for public pension plans in the coming decade. Underlying pension sustainability issues related to this panel topic will be covered, including the assumed rate of return, asset allocation models, proper diversification, adequate risk measures and more. The CIOs will also discuss how to position accordingly with today’s macroeconomic challenges. The future rising interest rate environment, Fed tapering, and challenging equity and fixed income returns will all be examined.
A few other speakers of note at The Pension Bridge Annual will be on the Keynote Panel titled “Contrasting Risk Parity and LDI Asset Allocation Models – the Benefits of a Dynamic Program.” Participating on this session will be Gretchen Tai, Chief Investment Officer at Hewlett Packard. She manages over $35 billion in assets worldwide for HP’s Global Treasury. Joining Tai will be three of the industry’s largest and most influential independent consulting firms, NEPC, Wilshire Consulting and Pension Consulting Alliance. Richard Charlton, the CEO and Chairman of NEPC will be representing his firm which serves 320 retainer clients with total assets over $770 billion. Julia Bonafede, President of Wilshire Consulting, also with over $700 billion assets under advisement, will be contributing her insights to this session of industry influentials. Moderating the Panel will be Neil Rue, Managing Director of Pension Consulting Alliance, a consulting firm with approximately $900 billlion in plan sponsor investment assets.
Another influential industry consultant, Stephen Cummings, CEO of Hewitt EnnisKnupp, will have a stand-alone role as a Keynote Speaker. He will be discussing “Ten Ways Your Consultant has Gotten it Wrong.” Mr. Cummings heads up investment advisory services at Hewitt EnnisKnupp for over 480 clients with over $2 trillion assets under management in North America alone.
The Pension Bridge is an innovative company offering educational conferences of the highest quality to the Institutional Investment Community. The Pension Bridge provides an impressive and influential speaker faculty in a controlled attendance setting that is conducive to networking. For more information, visit pensionbridge.com or e-mail Brett Semel at bsemel(at)pensionbridge(dot)com.