2023 London Institutional Investors Roundtable: How to get your Board on board with Alternatives

James Barty

Manging Director of Investment Strategy, Church Commissioners for England

Manging Director of Investment Strategy, Church Commissioners for England.  Responsible for all non real estate investments at the Commissioners (c£10.5bn) including public equities, absolute return, fixed income and private markets (PE, Credit, VC).

Also responsible for TAA hedging for the fund involving use of derivatives in equities, rates and FX. Set up TAA from scratch including building a suite of ML models to act as fund radar on turning points.

Previously Head of Global Cross Asset Strategy Bank of America, Head of Macro Strategy and Principal Arrowgrass Capital Partners, Head of Global and European Equity Strategy, Deutsche Bank and co-head of Global Economics and European Economics Deutsche Bank.

In addition he has been Head of Financial Policy at Policy Exchange and Head of Strategy at the British Bankers Association.

Pontus von Essen

Head of Strategy, AP7

Pontus von Essen is responsible for developing the business strategy for The Seventh Swedish National Pension Fund (AP7). He acts as an advisor to the CEO and deputy CEO in both business, strategy and macro analysis. Previously he was Head of Fixed Income, FX and Alpha at AP7, managing a team of four PMs.

Mr von Essen has over fifteen years of asset management and capital markets experience. Previously, he was Deputy CIO at Ericsson Pension Management with assets of 8bn USD. Earlier in his career he held positions within proprietary trading and institutional sales at the Swedish bank, SEB.

Mr von Essen holds a Master of Science in Finance with a major in Investments from the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE).

Rishab Sethi

Director, External Investments & Partnerships, New Zealand Superannuation Fund

Rishab is Director, External Investments and Partnerships at the New Zealand Superannuation Fund with responsibilities for external investment manager selection, mandate design and opportunity evaluation.

He has previously worked in asset allocation and corporate strategy roles at the Fund. Prior to joining the Guardians, he was a research economist with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and has been a research fellow at the Bank for International Settlements.

Rishab has Bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and economics from the University of Auckland and the Australian National University, and Master’s degrees in public administration and finance, from the London School of Economics and Columbia University.

Poul Winslow

Consultant , Leaf Creek Advisors

Poul Winslow serves on several boards and investment committees, including Enstar Group, International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM) and University of Toronto Asset Management. Poul is also an advisor to the investment industry through Leaf Creek Advisors.

Poul retired from CPP Investments in May 2022 as Senior MD and Global Head of Capital Markets & Factor Investing; he worked at CPP Investments since 2009 as Head of Thematic Investing and Head of External Portfolio Management. Before CPP Investments, he was Chief Investment Officer of Swedish AP2 (Andra AP-fonden) and also held several senior leadership roles at Nordea Investment Management in Denmark, Sweden and the US. Poul served as a Trustee of the Standards Board for Alternative Investments (SBAI/HFSB).

Poul has undergraduate and Masters degrees in Economics and Management from Aarhus University in Denmark.