E296: Former CIO of CalSTRS on Why LPs Overpay for ‘Innovation’
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Chris, I've been very excited to chat. Welcome to the How Invest podcast.
Thank you. Honored to be here. Enjoy it.
You were CIO at CalSTRS for 23 years. Now that you're a little bit removed from that position, what were the key decisions that you made over those 23 years that really shaped the fund and your pool of capital?
Governance in public funds really does drive return and it drives the CIO and the team to One of the early decisions that board made in literally the 1990s before I got there was to delegate broad authority to run the investment portfolio to the staff. At the time, it was very cutting edge in the States, but they were modeling it after, sure enough, the Canadian model, even though we didn't call it back then.
What key decisions shaped CalSTRS during Chris Ailman's tenure?
That's what attracted me to the role. The other thing was I knew some of the core of the staff. It was a fairly small team. It was back then it was a hundred billion dollar fund. Only 35 people. But I knew that I wanted to take us from kind of a sleepy, small shop to a world-class institution and running a good chunk of the assets in-house. And that's what we achieved over that time period. I'm very proud to say that we moved from the number three to the second largest fund in the U.S.A., And I think built a consistent track record of being above median to top quartile among public funds.
Today, it's $350 billion.
How does governance influence returns in public funds?
How were you able to achieve above median returns? Is it just siloing and giving the governance to individual teams or was there more to it?
In any portfolio, asset allocation does really explain close to 90% of the return. So when I got there, the fund was roughly about a 75, 30, 25 asset to debt mix. Didn't have much in the way of private markets. And that was my big push was to, and I told them that when I joined, was to move bigger into private equity, real estate. Down the road came opportunities like infrastructure and private debt much later. But the asset allocation operating very cost effectively. When you're a big fund, you're going to hopefully capture the beta of whatever the markets give you any given year. Boss saw a headwind in that and a drag and portfolio changes then kick up more transaction costs. So trying to be a steady long term investor, I constantly told the staff that, you know, one year is like a mile in a marathon.
What we care about is the pace and keeping our eyes on the long term.
Unpack that. How were you able to lower costs?
Britt Harris said it in one of your podcasts. At that scale, you've got the power of negotiation, using your size to an advantage when you negotiate, but also by not chasing the latest, greatest idea. So often I would see investors go after new ideas here and there that proved to be very, very expensive. And by paying attention to the net cost, we did a lot more passive. We spent the money on active management fees where we thought it made sense. We ran our fixed income in-house. We ran most of our passive equity in-house, very, very low cost. And even back then in private equity, we were trying to negotiate. We didn't really get into co-investments until later on. But trying to pay attention in real estate, we started investing in real estate operating companies.
literally before the 07, 08 crash. But that provided another opportunity where instead of partnering with a firm and paying them a fee to manage your assets, you could own part of that firm. Because one thing is clear in money management, they do make money up and down markets and you're going to pay fees.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:47
2
What key decisions shaped CalSTRS during Chris Ailman's tenure?
0:47–1:34
3
How does governance influence returns in public funds?
1:34–7:56
4
What strategies did CalSTRS use to achieve above median returns?
7:56–15:12
5
How did Chris Ailman lower costs while managing a large fund?
15:12–25:26
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from How I Invest with David Weisburd
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