Amy Flikerski, Head of External Portfolio Management at CPP Investments - the C$600bn Canadian state pension fund - joins Alan Dunne in this episode to discuss allocating capital to emerging and established hedge funds. They delve into the evolution of the hedge fund industry from the perspective of an allocator and particularly how the growth of the large multi-manager multi-strats has impacted hedge fund allocating. Amy discusses the role of the External Manager Allocations in the context of CPP Investment’s overall portfolio and some of the key considerations from a top down and bottom up perspective when the portfolio is constructed. Amy also highlights how CPP Investments evaluates emerging managers, what makes a great hedge fund manager and also offers valuable advice for hedge fund managers when engaging with allocators.

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Episode TimeStamps:

03:02 - Introduction to Amy Flikerski

08:02 - How they think about manager selection

09:28 - How do they categorize their strategies?

11:40 - How they assess their investment objective

13:07 - How they manage risk

14:29 - How the global macro environment affects them

15:41 - How they manage a billion dollar portfolio

17:11 - How the hedge fund industry have evolved

19:13 - Is there a place for multi-manager pods?

20:47 - A war for talent

22:34 - How they approach internal vs external management

26:34 - How is their team set up?

28:48 - What are they looking for when assessing managers?

30:54 - Making allocation to emerging managers

33:10 - What characterize their managers?

34:48 - Assessing the scalability of a strategy

37:29 - What makes a good allocator

39:23 - Advice for independant hedge funds

41:40 - What types of early stage managers do they look out for?

42:55 - How they approach their portfolio construction

45:25 - How they manage fund constraints

46:48 - What is their typical ticket size?

47:31 - Reaching the right level of transparency

49:46 - Characteristics of a succesful discretionary manager

51:14 - Managing drawdowns

52:56 - Their decision-making process

55:58 - How they approach commodities

57:33 - Advice for other managers

01:00:18 - Advice for people coming into the industry

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