Carol McFate put in a lot of time in corporate and insurance company treasury roles before accepting the CIO job at Xerox Corp. in late 2006. There she has shepherded the now $8 billion portfolio back from its outsourced solution, remaking the fund with two broad goals in mind: generating returns and matching liabilities.
At a roundtable discussion for the nine winners of the 2014 Institutional Investor U.S. Investment Management Awards, McFate shared some of her lessons learned:
On the shape of the portfolio
“We think of our portfolio in two parts. There’s the hedging piece, which is the long-duration fixed income, and the returns-seeking piece.”
On what hedge funds are up to
“You see the hedge fund community marketing like crazy to get access to defined contribution plans, which I think could be a very steep hill to get up.”
On shedding managers
“We’ve turned over some managers, particularly on the 401(k) side, because some of those folks didn’t learn much from the crisis.”
McFate is Top Small Corporate Pension Investor of the year. For more of her thoughts, read the full roundtable discussion.
