UPCOMING EVENTS 9-11 September 2026 - William will be attending the LGC Investment & Pensions Summit and will chair the LGPS Stream. PAST EVENTS 29-30 June 2026 - William attended the DG Publishing's LAPF Stategic Investment Forum. 5-6 May 2026 - William attended the LGPS Pooling Symposium. 19-20 March 2026 - William was a speaker at the LGC Investment Seminar at Carden Park. 25 February 2026 - William attended the Investment Discussion Dinner held by Crispin Derby Limited a

What is the seminal question for investors? Over the past 200 years, it has always come back to the government bond markets. If investors lose confidence in a currency or a government’s fiscal policy and impose too high a refinancing cost, it either has to come to heel or take more dramatic action such as help from the IMF or some form of default. Bond-markets vs politicians That is why Bill Clinton’s adviser, James Carville, famously said he’d like to be reincarnated as th

This article was originally published on Room 151's website here. I discuss why the pools' multi-manager equity funds have under-performed the index benchmarks and make some suggestions. Pool multi-manager funds have not delivered performance Exposure to equities is at the core of any open active pension scheme such as the LGPS because they deliver growth. Most of the six LGPS pools therefore offer (or will) an actively managed multi-manager equity sub-fund. Some, such as

Three months ago, I wrote an article suggesting we were close to a major market top. I made two points: the historical experience of low or negative market returns from such an extreme level of valuations, and expectations of a different and less market-friendly monetary policy under Chairman Warsh. With hindsight my timing was clearly wrong, as markets promptly rose by 10% to new highs. The first-quarter earnings season was much stronger than expected, which helped to jus

Linchpin Salon discussion on early stage investing in the U.K. Our latest Linchpin Salon discussion, held at King’s College London’s Strand campus, was originally intended to have a broader scope. However, the conversation stayed determinedly on the highly topical area of what is needed to encourage early-stage investors in the U.K. It was chaired by Aoifinn Devitt and the panellists were: Stephen Breban, Senior Adviser and Consultant Nadine Buckland, CEO, Zenzic Capital El

The Government wants to encourage collaboration between pools, as there are some asset classes where it does not make sense for each pool to create its own product. However, there are also barriers, and we have not seen this happen in practice. This article looking at what is needed to encourage cross-pool collaboration was originally published in Room 151 under the title 'Now is the time for a re-set on cross-pool collaboration'. The Government’s Fit For The Future co