The Catholic Superannuation and Retirement Fund (CSRF) awarded Barclays Global Investors (BGI) and BlackRock Investment Management a $100 million mandate each to capture short-term equity market opportunities.
The mandates were allocated to the BGI Alpha Advantage Equity fund and the BlackRock Australian Quant Strategies fund. The BGI fund uses a 120/20 long short investment approach while the BlackRock fund uses a 115/15 strategy.
“CSRF wanted to expand the mandate with our Australian equities managers to allow them the flexibility for some opportunistic shorting, in order to better manage our investment in volatile investment markets,” says Greg Cantor, chief executive at CSRF. “This follows from our lowering our exposure to listed equities from 60% to 55% in the ‘balanced’ portfolio last November.”