Investor Forum: Alternative Investing Forum Spring 2010

Date: 19th April   

Venue: Harvard Club NY

Overview
The Alternative Investing Forum Spring 2010 successfully gathered key leaders from the alternative investment community in an asset allocation, alternative asset manager and current sector opportunity event. The forum was attended by 129 delegates, with a number of delegates from Europe being unable to attend due to the erupting Icelandic volcano at the time. There were 31 speakers and 8 moderators, with a very high paced forum and lots of new people to meet with for one day, which is the intention.

The ratio of investor firms and manager firms being represented was close to 1:1 (40 investor firms to 45 manager firms), which resulted in very effective business networking, see graph to the right.  Representation from active family offices was particularly high, with 39% of the investors being from multi or single family investment offices.

Audience
The forum was attended by 129 delegates (of 139 registered; 5 cancellations from Europe, 5 no-shows). Over 33% of the participants were end-investors, fund of funds or investment consultants, with about 50% of the delegates being alternative investment managers. 9% were service providers, and 9% media / others. 39 of the delegates, including media and others, had also attended one or more of Catalyst’s previous investor events, giving testament to satisfied, returning attendees.

Investors
A large variety of investors (in total 44 of 48 registered) attended the forum with the majority being from family offices and fund of funds/investment consultants. There were particularly many large family offices ($500m-$5bn) that were looking for opportunities among new managers, and to learn about current investment trends, but notably also some large endowments and insurance companies.

Alternative Investment Managers
There was a special focus on growing, successful and mid-sized managers (72 delegates attending; 45 firms) that sought to bring their funds to the next level. The Catalyst team put serious effort in identifying and inviting this category of investment managers. In particular, interest was strong from energy/commodity managers and macro focused managers.

Program
The agenda was built up from discussions with the speaker and panelists, focusing on new trends for alternative funds, asset allocation issues, and investment topics. In the afternoon focus was on current sector opportunities. In an attempt to cross feed between investor and managers, both investor panels and manager panels were put in the morning and afternoon respectively.

Leading Speakers and Delegates
Below are a number of the influential delegates that attended the forum:
John Regan, Senior Investment Officer, Cornell University Endowment
David Wiederecht, President - Investment Strategies, GE Asset Management
Ben Alimansky, Head of Manager Alliance, Glenmede Trust
David Turner, Head of Private Equity, Guardian Life Insurance Company of America
Patricia O'Sullivan, Director, John Hancock
Michael Mazzola, Head of Alternative Investments, MetLife Investments
Geoffrey Lasry, Associate Director, PAAMCO
Gerald Chen-Young, Director of Investments & Portfolio Manager, United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
Madanda Machayya, Senior Vice President, Zurich Alternative Asset Management

Feed-back – Alternative Investing Forum Spring 2010
The feed-back after the forum was in general very positive and delegates appreciated in particular the focus and design, as well as the choice of topics and speakers. Below are some reviews from delegates:

“I wanted to say thank you for organizing such a great event yesterday! Well done!”
Ronen Schwartzman, CEO, Ten Capital Advisors
 
“Many thanks for the great conference. The topics are carefully selected to meet the ever-changing industrial needs. The participants are engaging. There are a lot of synergies in this conference.”
Susan Weerts, Seeking Alpha Contributing Reporter

“It was great to meet you yesterday. We really enjoyed the Forum. You and your staff did a great job organizing/running the event. We look forward to attending the next one.”
Mike Krumenacker, Taum Sauk Capital Management

“Thank you for putting together the event, I thought it was an excellent opportunity to me with our peers and potential investors.”
Daniel Lerer, Arpeggio Capital

“Thanks for inviting me to the conference. I find the conference very useful.”
Linda Chen, GAO Advisors

“Thanks again for a great day on Monday.  We appreciated the introduction to these investors and will certainly look forward to participating in more events that you organize in the future.”
John Bartholdson, Principal, Newton Capital Partners