The University of California endowment is continuing its hunt for alpha as it seeks to add more non-conventional strategies to its equity programme.
A portfolio recommendation made over the summer will have the $6 billion plus endowment programme move capital to higher beta and alpha strategies, with 10% of long equity moving to opportunistic strategies that should offer higher returns and lower downside risk than the previous asset allocation.
The University of California’s endowment pool has the highest weighting to long-only equity and fixed-income among US universities and the fifth from the lowest total in alternatives, according to a recent presentation made to the endowment’s investment committee. Marie Berggren, chief investment officer, told trustees that in comparison with private universities, that the University of California endowment has a much...